In Fire, In Ice
by moirariordan
Summary: The sound of a world falling. JustinAlex.
1. I: Holocaust

I do not own Wizards of Waverly Place, nor anything else referenced. The title is influenced by a Robert Frost poem_._

--

_I was getting out of a taxi the other day, and my heart fell out of my backpack and into a puddle –_

–Michelle Lewis,_ Nowhere & Everywhere_

--

**I: Holocaust.**

--

It's just an accident.

There's a wizard who lives in Brooklyn, an old man who lives alone, his only companionship the illusions of his late wife that he conjures at night with his splintered wand. It's the only kind of magic he has energy left to perform, and it hurts nobody and does nothing but comfort a man who is alone in the last stage of his life. Or that's the theory, anyway, until the landlord breaks down the door after hearing nothing but silence in the upstairs apartment for two weeks and finds a shadowy specter of a young woman crying over an aged corpse. ("My love," she repeats, over and over, and this could be romantic but instead is the beginning of the end.)

The police search his apartment and find cracked volumes full of secrets that were never meant to be seen by mortal eyes – potions in thick, glass bottles and iron cauldrons with dust congealing in the leftover muck in the bottom. The FBI comes, Homeland Security and representatives from Washington D.C. and they bring in specialists and scientists and nobody can explain the woman who says nothing but is as translucent as a thin, silk curtain. (She fades after a week but they have pictures and video and a hundred eyewitness accounts, so it doesn't even matter.)

After the story moves from the tabloids to the main media outlets, the police commissioner makes a statement and tells the public not to panic, to stay calm and that the phenomenon is likely scientifically explainable and perfectly logical. Nobody really believes it.

The Russo family watches the news coverage from the shelter of their apartment, trepidation and dread rising in their throats.

"It'll blow over," Jerry says with false confidence. "And if it doesn't, well – there are wizards trained to deal with things like this."

Alex wants to ask more, and she can tell that Justin wants to too, but the look on their father's face keeps them silent.

Conspiracy nuts, delusional idiots and every New Age hippie who ever read a deck of tarot cards flock in spades to New York, lining the streets outside of the old man's apartment, going on CNN and MSNBC to further escalate a situation that is rapidly growing out of control. Rumors start flying and the tension tightens as months pass and nobody comes up with an explanation for the mysteries and questions raised by the old man's possessions.

'Magic' becomes a curse word and vendors across the nation start peddling anti-witch pendants and other useless trinkets to supposedly ward off evil. Pastors and religious organizations speak of the End of Days and the seduction of evil and Satan and nothing is blowing over, nothing at all.

Wiz Tech suspends classes for the children's safety, advising everyone to lay low and perform as little magic as possible. Wizards Weekly and all the other various magazines, newspapers and radio shows designed specifically for the wizard community all shut down, deeming it too much of a risk, and magic carpets and all other obvious displays of magic are temporarily outlawed. Jerry sits down with Alex and tells her that under no circumstances is she to do any spells, no matter how much she wants to and he doesn't care if it's unfair, it's not a game anymore, this is their safety and the safety of every other wizard in the world that's at stake.

He didn't have to tell her that though, she hasn't so much as magicked her hair dry since this whole thing started.

One day at school, Alex is sitting with Harper in the cafeteria when Ricki Matthews and her lackeys zero in on a quiet, shy freshman who has always been the perfect target for bullies.

"Hey, freak," Ricki says, and Harper grabs Alex's arm.

"Ohmigod, look! Oh, that poor girl, we have to do something!"

Alex raises an eyebrow but before she can reply, the freshman rises to her feet and throws her bowl of jello in Ricki's face.

"Witch," she hisses, and the crowd watching erupts into excited murmurs and even some applause. Ricki, scandalized, runs off, hands over her face.

"Did you _see_ that?!" Harper claps her hands excitedly. "That was _awesome!_ She sure showed her!"

Alex gulps through a dry throat and meets Justin's eyes across the room. He looks as sick as she feels. "Yeah," she says weakly, and tries not to cry.

--

In Butte, Montana, a young wizard cracks under the pressure. He takes his wand into a crowded mall and spells all the mannequins to attack passersby. His father is able to reverse the spell before anyone is hurt, but this is the proof that the world's been waiting for.

The wizard, his father and the rest of their family are taken into custody, and the hysteria begins.

"Jerry, we need to leave," Theresa keeps saying. "We need to go."

"Go where?" Jerry replies. "Look, they have no way of knowing who we are."

But wizards all around the globe are being taken away, to where, nobody knows, and it's all so surreal, like something out of an X-Men comic or something. Alex keeps waiting and waiting for someone to do something, to stop it, to make it go away, but nothing happens and people are still disappearing and at school, calling someone 'magical' or 'witchy' gets you a week's detention.

And it doesn't help that there are those wizards who are angry and bitter over this treatment – rightfully so, but still – and therefore every month or so there is a new account in the news about a public statue coming alive and running amok in the city or an entire city bridge sprouting pink and purple stripes. The protests are never violent but do nothing but escalate the rising panic, and Alex doesn't see the point.

Her family has morphed into something unrecognizable in the face of something this ugly, and Alex finds herself at a complete loss for the first time in her life. Theresa cleans everything and anything within her reach and often Alex will walk in on her mother on her hands and knees, hands encased in thick yellow gloves and scrubbing at the kitchen floor with a manic sort of concentration. When she isn't cleaning, she's crying or clinging to her children and husband as if she is afraid they will simply fade away (which probably is a justifiable fear, Alex realizes with a sick clarity).

Her father, on the other hand, valiantly pretends as if there is nothing wrong and keeps repeating that things will be okay, guys, why is everyone so worried? Wizards are resilient, wizards are tough, and everything will blow over, you'll see. But he cleans out the lair and makes Justin do a spell to hide everything in the apartment that pertains to magic at all, and one night Alex overhears him talking in the living room with Uncle Kelbo, voices hushed.

"They're all underground," Kelbo's saying, and Alex scoots in closer to hear clearly. "They've got a whole network set up. The family from Montana – they were the first."

"But Washington keeps saying they've got them in protective custody – "

"Pfft." Kelbo waves a hand. "The humans are covering their behinds. No – they're all safe. This network – they've been moving people around, giving them new identities, new lives. They call it 'misplacing.'"

Jerry gives a long sigh. "This is insane." He shakes his head. "How did this happen?"

Kelbo places a big hand on his shoulder. "I'm not sure anyone knows."

Alex runs back up to her room, hand over her mouth and thinks of history class and lessons on the Civil War, on World War II and old films with black and white film strips, and then she grabs a shoe and throws it at her mirror.

--

Justin graduates from high school. He's the valedictorian.

Alex sits with her parents and Max and watches her brother stand at the podium to give his speech, staring down at his note cards with such a grave expression on his face that her head starts to ache.

He gives a straight-forward speech, exactly what all the teachers want. He'd downloaded it from the internet, Alex knows. (She'd caught him doing it and in a burst of fury typical to her these days, asks him when the fuck he'd stopped caring, but all he'd done was look at her sadly before turning to retreat back to his books, and she hates, _hates_ what their lives have become.)

But then, on the last line, he pauses and looks up from his cards to the spot where he knows they're all sitting, and Alex swears he looks straight at her when he says, "the world is a scary place, but all I remember is faith. I hope that's what you all remember, too" and Alex is suddenly powerfully, fiercely proud to know him.

He gets a standing ovation. Alex knows that half the auditorium is thinking something completely different from what her brother meant, but right then she doesn't care. She stands and claps as loudly as she can.

After the ceremony, they go back to the restaurant and slap the 'Closed' sign on the door and eat dinner together as a family. Theresa brings out a cake for Justin with blue and white icing and 'Happy Grad Day, Valedictorian!' penciled on the top. They sing He's A Jolly Good Fellow while Max scrapes 'happy' from the top and sticks it in his mouth, and things are almost like normal again.

After everyone has stuffed themselves as much as they can, Theresa stands and walks over to behind Jerry's chair, and they exchange an Important Look that makes Alex pause with her fork halfway to her mouth.

"Guys," Theresa says. "We weren't sure how to tell you this, exactly, but I think you're all old enough now to expect the truth from us."

Justin throws Alex a look and she shrugs.

"Justin, Max, Alex," Jerry says, "we're having a baby."

Silence. "You're _kidding,_" blurts Max.

"No," Theresa replies, a hint of warning in her voice.

"That's…great," Justin says, because he's always the first one to say things like that. "…right?"

"Yes," Jerry says firmly. "It's wonderful."

He reaches up and takes Theresa's hand, and they exchange smiles that have nothing to do with anyone else in the room but each other.

Later, Alex knocks on Justin's door and slips inside, the moonlight illuminating everything and turning it into blue. She slinks over and sits on the edge of his bed as he regards her from his spot against the wall, a book in his hands.

"Is this a good thing?" she asks, because Justin always knows what's good and right and what's not, and she really needs to know.

He's silent for a very long moment. "I don't know," he says, and for some reason this is more terrifying than anything.

She falls backwards and puts her hands over her face, and when she feels the bed dip next to her, she turns towards him and leans her forehead against his knee and tries to breathe normally.

--

With the news of the impending baby, the Russo family seems to forget who they're supposed to be. Nobody dares to even mention magic, let alone perform it, and Alex slowly starts to let go of the freedom she's always dreamed of, the freedom that she thought magic could provide for her.

Justin decides to take night classes at NYU while living at home. He says that he wants to help out with the baby coming, but Alex isn't fooled when there are anti-magic protests on campus every weekend and every day more and more people go missing.

He works at the restaurant during the day, and Alex starts going home for lunch now that she has open campus as a junior. Harper comes with her so she can throw herself at Justin but he's so busy that he barely glances in their direction most days.

"I just think it's so admirable of him to sacrifice his freshman year of college to help out your mom," Harper gushes. "When I graduate high school and go to NYU, we'll get an apartment close by so he can drop by whenever he wants to."

Alex sips her mineral water and purses her lips. "Sure, Harper."

One day, an anti-magic protest parades by the restaurant and Harper grabs Alex's arm so roughly that her chicken-salad sandwich flies out of her hands.

"Look, there's Brent Moore!" she says, pointing. "He is such a _hottie._ And he totally likes you, Jessica Miller told me that he asked about you in gym class on Monday."

Alex eyes the aforementioned hottie with disgust. He's short (no), has bad highlights (please) and is holding a sign that says 'magic is a sin and also evil' (uch, he could at least come up with a catchy slogan to label his gross ignorance, for God's sake).

"I'm eating Harp, I can meet him later."

"What? Come on, he's right there!" Harper bounces in her seat. "And plus, there's Sara and Hailey, too – everybody's out there! It'll be fun!"

Alex grips the edge of her chair. "I don't feel like it," she says, trying for nonchalant.

Justin suddenly appears, a fresh glass of iced tea in hand. He sets it gently at the edge of Alex's plate, eyes on Harper. "You're thinking of getting involved in the protests, Harper?" he asks neutrally.

Harper flushes and Alex can practically hear the birds that are chirping in her head. "I think so," she says, smile so wide Alex can see her gums. "I mean, it'll look good on my college applications and it's a great way to meet people. Plus," she shrugs and beams up at Justin. "It's a worthy cause, after all."

Justin nods once. "Right." He turns on his heel and leaves.

"Omigod," Harper gushes. "I think he was impressed. Did you think he was impressed? We totally have to go out there now, I have to – Justin admires people who stand up for what they believe in, he said so that one time when we watched that documentary about Rosa Parks on the History Channel – "

"Shut up, Harper," Alex snaps. She runs the back of her hand over the back of her iced tea and presses it to her neck, the perspiration from the glass doing nothing to calm the flush rising on her skin. "Just – shut up."

Harper pauses, looking uncertain. "What?"

Alex shakes her head, unable to reply. (Everything is wrong.)

--

The initial optimism that came after news of the baby fades quickly, and one afternoon Alex returns from school to find the shades drawn and the doors locked and Kelbo waving his wand along the walls of the apartment.

Seeing anyone perform magic at all is rare enough that she is startled. "What are you doing?"

"Protection wards." Kelbo cracks a grin. "Never be too careful." He flicks his wand and the walls glow white for half a second before fading back to normal.

Alex can feel the magic in the wards, stronger than anything ever done in magic lessons. It's a buzz in her head like the beginning of a headache, so she starts doing her homework in the restaurant (and maybe helping Justin wait tables, sometimes. Maybe).

One day, she comes home from school to find the shop mostly unattended. There aren't any customers and it's not unusual for Justin to hang out in the back studying or reading, but what is unusual are the raised voices she hears from the kitchen.

She dumps her bag and heads for the back to find Justin fighting with their father. As soon as she walks in, they abruptly stop talking. She ignores this and focuses on Justin's bloody hands.

"Oh my God, Justin, what happened?"

"Nothing," he mumbles.

Jerry throws a dark look at him and turns for the stairs. "I'll go get some disinfectant."

Alex eyes his back warily and hops up on the counter. "Let me see." Justin allows her to take his hands in hers, holding them up to the light from the window. His knuckles are scraped and bruised, but there's more blood on them there should be. "You got into a fight," she says, almost awed.

He sighs. "Not really. More like…I punched someone and then ran away."

Alex smirks. "Hey, it's better than nothing, at least." She grabs a paper towel and leans over to wet it in the sink, pressing it to his hands to gently wipe away the dirt and grime. "Who'd you punch?"

"Some idiot at the subway station." His expression darkens.

"What'd he do, insult your favorite scientist or something?" Alex says, carefully not meeting his gaze.

"No, just mouthing off about – " he cuts himself off.

"Oh." Alex throws the bloody paper towel aside and lays her the back of her hand across his knuckles.

(This isn't fair, but nobody cares.)

--

When Theresa hits her second trimester, Kelbo brings up the idea of misplacing.

"I'm just saying, you know, childbirth is always unpredictable. I mean, when you had Alex the entire hospital staff's hair all turned blue."

Jerry crinkles his brow. "We can handle it. You can do containment and secrecy wards – "

"It's too risky," Kelbo interrupts. "I could barely do the protection ones without alerting someone. They've got radar everywhere now, they're pouncing on anyone that gives even the slightest blip." He sighs and shakes his head. "They know we're hiding."

Theresa's hands flutter around her mouth. "I'd like to leave, Jerry, I would, but…it's Justin's freshman year – Alex is almost done with high school – "

"You may not have a choice," Kelbo says. "Not if this new one is as unpredictable as Alex and Max were."

Justin cocks his head at Alex from where they're eavesdropping from the hallway. "Hear that? You were unpredictable from the start."

She cracks a grin and elbows him. "Yeah, well, you were boring." (He makes her smile like it's his job and she can't be anything but grateful.)

But by the time Theresa hits five months, it's obvious what the safe choice is. The baby obviously pays no attention to things like discretion and secrecy, and every time Theresa rises to her feet she leaves a trail of sparks and rainbows exploding in the air.

"Maybe Baby thinks it's pretty?" Alex guesses, waving away a four-leaf clover.

"Well, maybe Baby should cut it out," Theresa says, glaring at her stomach. "Hear that? No more of this nonsense!"

After a close call in which Theresa almost sprays a group of customers with multi-colored glittery confetti, she is confined to the apartment.

"You can't stay," Kelbo reasons. He's been staying with them ever since the baby started making its powers known. "It's too dangerous. It's only luck that you haven't been discovered yet."

Theresa always closes her eyes and turns her head away, as if trying to ignore the subject's presence. Jerry just sighs and says nothing.

Alex starts hanging out in Justin's room at night, taking comfort in something she can't quite put a name to yet. One night, Max comes in and collapses on Justin's bed.

"I think we're gonna misplace."

"Don't be stupid," Alex automatically replies.

"The baby turned all the walls pink in Mom and Dad's bedroom."

Alex curses under her breath and sits up. "Seriously?" Max nods.

"Maybe it won't be so bad," Justin says. "Maybe we can go somewhere else, where everything isn't so intense. I mean, things aren't nearly as bad in Europe – there are even some wizards who are speaking out and identifying themselves in France and Switzerland."

"Yeah." Alex nudges Max. "We could go to Amsterdam." She smirks.

Max gives her a blank look. "Amsterdam?"

"Never mind," Justin says, rolling his eyes. "Just relax, Maximilian. Everything's going to be fine."

Max pauses, then jumps to his feet. "Tyah, I _know_. God." He rolls his eyes and leaves.

Alex shakes her head and smirks at Justin. "He's so easy."

"Yeah." Justin leans back in his desk chair and props his feet up on the desk.

"…are there really wizards in France? Who can, like, not hide and stuff?" Alex asks, studying the side of his face.

Justin opens his mouth, then closes it without saying anything, studying a nothing spot in the air.

Alex's heart plummets. "Right."

--

By the seventh month of her pregnancy, Theresa can no longer deny that it's too dangerous not to go underground. Kelbo reassures them that there are places they can go, places that wizards are hiding that humans can't go. (Alex thinks of Mars and tries not to giggle because it's not funny, it's really just sad.)

"No," Theresa says. "I want my children to have a life. Not a normal one, maybe, but as close as they can get."

"And they're not dropping out of school," Jerry says firmly.

Kelbo nods and comes back a day later with a really ugly look on his face. "Okay, good news and bad news," he says. "I can get you misplaced, the whole shebang, with new identities and everything."

"And the bad news?" Justin asks.

"They can't take more than four people." Kelbo winces and spreads his hands out apologetically. "It's too risky."

Theresa's face freezes. "No. No way."

"Okay, then we'll take you underground," Kelbo says.

"No!" Theresa screeches, face flushing. Jerry rushes over and places his hands on her shoulders. "They have to take all of us!"

"Theresa," Kelbo says, leaning down. "Any magic is dangerous, especially powerful spells like the ones needed to get you new identities. Four is the limit for a reason."

Theresa grabs Jerry's arm and starts to cry. "This isn't happening."

Jerry shushes her, rubbing her back soothingly. "Okay. We'll go underground. They'll take us somewhere safe."

Alex is frozen, watching her mother. She knows, knows what this means. Turning to look at Justin, he's looking straight at her and she knows that he knows, too.

"I'll stay," she says and startles herself.

Theresa looks up at her, face frozen. "No," Jerry says, not even looking at her.

"Yes." Rising to her feet, she feels an energy and enthusiasm she'd thought she'd lost. She grabs her father's arm and drags him into the kitchenette. "You can't take her underground," she hisses. "You know where they'll take her – she can't have the baby on Jupiter or whatever."

Jerry runs a hand through his hair. "We don't have a choice, honey. We're not gonna leave you here by yourself. It's just not an option."

"She won't be alone." Justin appears and leans over the kitchen counter, Kelbo over his shoulder. "I'll stay with her."

Jerry shakes his head frantically. "Guys, no – "

"It makes sense," Alex says. "I only have a year left of high school, anyway, and Justin has classes. And Kelbo will be here, and as soon as I graduate, we'll both come and join you, wherever you are. That'll be long enough for things to calm down so that we can do the spells for Justin and me."

"I am not leaving my children alone, not now," Jerry says, panic rising in his voice.

"They won't be alone, Jerry," Kelbo says. "Wizards never are."

Jerry shakes his head, visibly upset, and Kelbo draws him away into the hallway, arm around his shoulder and speaking to him in low tones.

Alex turns to look at Justin and sees her own resolve reflected in his face. "So," she says.

"So," he replies, and that's that.

--

That night, Alex can hear her parents fighting. She ducks into Justin's room and they both listen through the air vent.

Alex wakes up alone in Justin's bed the next morning. Padding into the kitchen, she finds him at the stove, scrambling eggs.

"They're doing it," Justin says. "Mom's not happy, but she agreed somewhere around four o'clock."

"Did you sleep at all?"

Justin hands her a plate of food and doesn't reply.

Kelbo sets the date for two months from now. "We have to make it look normal," he says. "Spread the word with your friends – kids, you too. You're moving away, and Alex and Justin are staying with me to finish out the school year."

When Alex tells Harper, she cries. "I can't believe you're moving." Then her face pales. "Ohmigod, I can't believe _Justin_ is moving!" she wails and collapses into Alex's lap.

Any sadness that Alex had felt quickly morphs into irritation. (She starts screening her calls.)

Theresa stays locked in the apartment, suppression charms on her stomach and in a perpetual state of upset. Whenever Justin or Alex walks into the room she latches onto them desperately. Jerry does the same thing, clearing his throat all the time and hugging them every time they leave the room.

Max starts bullying people at school. Justin and Alex catch him one afternoon when they go to pick him up for a dentist appointment. Alex's first reaction is to thump the daylights out of him, but Justin rolls his eyes.

"And we wonder why he's bullying people," he says.

"Well, what do you think we should do, oh great one?" Alex replies. "Hug him?"

Justin clears his throat. "Uh, maybe we should just tell Mom and Dad."

Max gets grounded for a week. When Justin tries to talk to him, Max throws a book at his head.

"Little brat got me good," Justin grumbles, holding an ice pack to his forehead.

"Look on the bright side – it'll distract people from your acne," Alex offers. He throws the ice pack at her and she laughs. (It's weird, okay, but ever since The Decision things seem so much brighter, and she doesn't want to know why that is.)

As the date of infamy grows closer, Max gets surlier and Alex starts to worry that attitude is the last thing she'll get from her little brother for a year (not that she'll admit it).

The last week before the misplacement, half the apartment is packed up in boxes and the mood is horrible. Theresa is crying almost constantly and won't let Justin or Alex out of her sight. At night, they all sleep together in the living room, the glow of the television sparkling the tears on her face. (Alex's face sparkles too, but don't mention it.)

The day before, Kelbo helps them load their belongings into a U-Haul. Alex watches as a heavy heart as half their lives drive away down the street.

"Are you sure they can't know where we are?" Theresa says. There's no contact – no phones, no email, nothing – that's what been the hardest on her, Alex knows. "Just for emergencies?"

"They'll have people to call in an emergency, don't worry. And I'll take care of them." Kelbo lays a hand on her shoulder. "It's only for a year."

Theresa bites her lip and shakes her head.

The night before, Alex and Justin stay up all night with their father in the lair as he gives them a last minute magic lesson (without demonstration, of course).

Jerry's hands shake, but he shows Justin the books they were never allowed to look at before, the books with the spells for destruction, for self-defense and deception.

"Don't use anything unless you have to," Jerry says. "Last resort _only_, got it? This is not what magic is about."

Alex nods solemnly. (She knows the words are for her.)

The next morning, Theresa and Jerry hug them both for close to fifteen minutes.

"Keep faith, queridas," Theresa whispers. "We are always with you. Always."

"We're so proud of you both," Jerry says when they finally break apart. "You're proud and strong and powerful, don't ever forget that." His voice cracks at the end. "Listen to each other and work together."

"Don't worry, Daddy," Alex says, biting her lip to shove the emotion back. "We bring out the best in each other, remember?"

Max, who has been sulking all week, comes up to them and surprises them both by hugging them fiercely.

"Sorry," he mumbles into Justin's stomach, and that's when Alex starts to cry.

"It's okay, Max," Justin says. "Be good, okay?" Max nods and runs down the stairs to the car.

They watch them drive away from the upstairs window, the protection wards buzzing between them and the outside world. Justin puts a hand on the back of Alex's neck and she leans into him, soaking his shirt with her tears.

After they're gone, Kelbo comes upstairs and smiles sadly. "Get some rest, kids. I'm officially forbidding you to go to school today."

Alex feels a tug and realizes that Justin is holding her hand. "Okay," he says, and leads her to his bedroom.

(They collapse on top of the blankets and sleep for three days.)

--

Kelbo stays right on top for them for the first month or so. They've hired extra help for the restaurant, but Kelbo still seems to think that he needs to bumble around himself, spilling soup on the customers and messing up the balance books.

Finally, Justin takes him aside and explains gently that yes, he knows he means well, but Justin and Alex have worked at the shop since they were six and could do it in their sleep, and they're sure he has better things to do then serve sandwiches all day.

When Alex finally gathers the energy to return to school, Harper is waiting for her, wringing her hands and looking contrite.

"Look, I know you're angry at me," she starts, forgoing a greeting. "And I know I suck. This has gotta be really hard on you, being away from your family, and I haven't been supportive at all." She smiles and holds her arms out for a hug. "Forgive me?"

Too weary to do anything else, Alex accepts her hug. "I'm sorry too," she says on a sigh. "Just – could you try and hold off on the Justin-chasing for awhile? He's really not in a good place." She pauses. "Neither am I."

Harper draws an imaginary cross over her chest. "I'll stay away from him, swear." Alex smiles and thinks nastily to herself, that'll last about five minutes.

She's wrong. It lasts a week.

"It must be so hard for you, really. I don't know what I'd do if I had to be away from my family. They're just my rock, you know?" Harper leans so far over the counter that her pigtail drops into her Diet Coke. "Hey, there's a documentary on the mating patterns of bluebirds on tonight. Would you like to watch it with me? We can talk about your torment if you'd like."

"Um," Justin says.

"Justin has class at night," Alex says. (Not on Thursdays, but whatever.)

"Oh," Harper says. "Well, maybe another time."

Justin smiles and throws an 'I owe you' look at Alex, swiping their empty plates and escaping to the kitchen.

Harper sighs. "He's so brave."

Alex bites her lip and follows him into the kitchen. "Sorry."

"She's like a pitbull. In a cherry-print dress." Justin shakes his head.

Alex shrugs and smirks. "She's cute, though," she says half-heartedly.

"Yeah, okay." Justin dumps the dishes in the sink and wipes his hands on the cloth hanging from his belt and Alex watches the tendons in his wrists twist beneath his skin. "No offense, I know she's your friend, but she creeps me out." He shrugs.

Alex stifles a giggle and looks out at Harper, who is picking the seeds out of the tomato in her sandwich. "Yeah, don't blame you."

--

Kelbo starts disappearing for longer periods of time once he is assured that Justin and Alex have a handle on things.

"Don't know why I doubted you," he says (to both of them, but really to Justin). "You're more capable than most adults I know. Hell, I know you're more capable than me."

Justin shrugs and doesn't disagree. Alex giggles.

Alex thinks briefly of all the things she could do now that she is free from parental supervision the majority of the time, but finds herself without the energy to even have Harper over for school-night sleepovers. She works at the shop while Justin is at class and cleans the apartment (much sparser now that most of the stuff is gone, off into the oblivion with the rest of their family) and tries to cook dinner, but after she manages to explode mashed potatoes all over the kitchen roof, Justin tells her to just order take-out.

They eat in his room, most of the time, and do homework. Alex knows that he finds it soothing and to her surprise starts to marginally enjoy it, too. (These questions all have answers.)

One day, she gets a test handed back with a big, fat A-plus at the top and stares in shock at it for almost twenty minutes.

Justin hugs her when he sees it. "I knew you had it in you," he says. "See? You're not stupid. I told you."

Alex snorts. "Figures. The first time I actually start doing good in school and Mom and Dad aren't here to see it."

It's almost normal. (Almost.) Alex feels like a regular girl for the first time in her life. The only reminder she has that she's not regular is the buzz in her head in the apartment and the door to the lair (which is now a guest bedroom, but the buzz gives it away). Sometimes, Kelbo will eat dinner with them when he's not busy doing…whatever it is that he does (Justin tells her that he thinks Kelbo is one of the ones working on the underground network, working to misplace wizard families and sympathizers, but Alex can't really see her uncle being proactive enough to do anything important like that, as mean as it sounds) and when they're not working or studying, it's almost…fun.

(But Theresa's due date has been marked on their calendar since they left, and Alex wakes up the morning of and tip-toes into Justin's room. He's already awake, and she sits next to him on the bed and they watch the sunrise and maybe she cries a little, because she always wanted a sister and now she can't shake the dreadful feeling that she's not ever gonna know.)

--

One evening, Alex and Justin are eating Chinese food and fighting over the TV (the Great Debate: Grey's Anatomy or Dateline?) when a news bulletin interrupts them both.

The anchorwoman is coldly rattling off details that she shouldn't know, that no human should know. On the screen is a picture of a wand.

"It has been confirmed that each witch-family has only one individual with powers," she says. "Apparently, the children of the family battle each other for the power in a barbaric and vicious power struggle. The victor keeps the wand and the power for their own use – now let's cut to Bob Greene with some tips on how to witch-proof your home and some signs to watch out for – Bob?"

Alex sinks down to the couch. "That's wrong," she whispers. "It's not like that. We're not…vicious."

"They got one," Justin says. "They captured a wizard. How else would they know?"

"Oh, God."

Kelbo shows up an hour later and promptly turns the TV off. "I'm not gonna lie to you guys," he says. "It's pretty bad. We don't know his name, all we know is that they captured him somewhere in Florida. We couldn't get to him in time." Kelbo sighs, looking much older than he should.

"What does it mean?" Alex asks. "What's gonna happen?"

"I dunno, kid," Kelbo says. Something snaps and Alex storms off, ignoring Kelbo's call, slamming the door behind her and trying to block out the world.

(It isn't until a few minutes later that she realizes she's stormed into Justin's room, not hers, and she doesn't know what that means.)

--

With the capture of the Unknown Wizard (as he comes to be called) things start happening very, very quickly.

Anti-magic legislation is brought before Congress, and every day there's a new secret being exposed on national television. ("What are they doing to him?" Alex whispers to Justin as they watch. "What are they doing to that poor wizard?" He never answers.)

Alex has a few weeks left of her junior year left when Harper shows up at her door with a bright yellow badge pinned to her vest.

"Check it _out!_" She displays it proudly and Alex squints at it. The letters 'AMJL' are outlined in red. "I got in!"

"What is AMJL?"

"You haven't heard?" Harper asks. "The Anti-Magic Junior League!"

Alex feels suddenly, intensely sick. "What?" she croaks.

"Omigod, it's so cool," Harper says, grabbing Alex's arm. "It's this organization that was started by Ryan Simmons – you know, the UCLA student who put together that anti-magic march at the Pentagon last month? It's this league of young students all across the country who are banding together to take a stand against magic and the evil and amorality that it stands for," Harper says quickly, as if reciting from a pamphlet. "Isn't it cool? You should totally apply too, we could do it together – hey, Justin can too! Do you think he'll be impressed?"

Alex wrenches away, ripping her arm out of Harper's grip. "What?" she says sharply. "No!"

"What?" Harper frowns. "Alex, what's wrong?"

"Don't you see?" Alex cries, feeling her world crashing down around her feet. "Don't you see what they're _doing_? How can you be so _blind_?"

"Alex, I don't – "

"Shut up." Alex flies past her and runs out, blind to anything but the pavement below her feet. She hears Justin call out to her but chokes on a reply and keeps running, running (away, away, away).

--

She ends up at Central Park and sits on a bench, staring at her cell phone. Harper has called her six times, Justin fourteen.

Scrolling through her contacts, she stops on the entry for her father's cell phone and feels a lurch in her stomach. She wants to talk to him fiercely, wants to hear him tell her that everything will be okay, that Harper wasn't all that great anyway and that Alex wouldn't want to be best friends with someone who'd be willing to join something like that, anyway.

Pressing call, she listens to it ring and starts to cry when she hears the disconnected message.

"Hey."

Startled, she looks up and sees Justin. Wiping her face, she frowns. "How'd you find me?"

"Are you kidding? You always come here when you're upset." He sits next to her. "Remember the time you ran away when Mom and Dad wouldn't let you get a ferret?"

Alex laughs. "They were so cute. And I could've taken care of it."

Justin looks doubtful, but ignores the statement. "We were frantic, calling all your friends, your teachers, all the stores at the mall." He chuckles. "And I remembered how much you liked this spot and came looking and found you right here, listening to your walkman as if nothing was wrong."

Alex pouts. "I was eleven, you know."

"I know." He slides his arm around her shoulder and squeezes it. "I know."

"They have a 'junior league' now," Alex says softly. "Harper joined it."

"I know," he repeats.

"I hate this." Alex closes her fist around her phone tightly. "I hate her. I hate everyone."

Justin pulls her close and doesn't reply.

--


	2. II: Run

--

**II: Run.**

--

Kelbo disappears for good the next week.

Alex and Justin are both frantic with worry but trying not to show it. They call all his friends – the ones they know about – and search all the haunts they know he frequents and come up with nothing. They watch the news with ten times the dread, fearing the moment they see their uncle's face show up on the screen, but there's nothing – simply nothing.

"Something went wrong," Justin says one night. "He never would've just left."

Alex sits on the kitchen counter and watches him make spaghetti, their mother's recipe. "How will we find Mom and Dad without Kelbo?" she asks. "When the year is up?"

Justin shakes his head and tightens his grip on the ladle.

Alex has been avoiding Harper ever since the incident the week before, and finally after days of ignored calls and radio silence at school, Harper starts avoiding right back. Alex catches sight of her walking down the hallways with a group of students all bearing the sickening yellow-and-red Junior League badges (yellow and red, please, who designed those ugly things? They clash with everything) and feels the last little bit of her old life slipping away.

She aces all but one of her finals – science (she hates science). Justin had been helping her, but she still only pulled off a C – but the teacher takes her aside after class and compliments her on her improvement, telling her that going from a failing grade to a C was something to be proud of. (She kind of is. It's totally weird, but she's starting to dig this whole geek thing.)

But they all like her a lot more now that she's actually putting in effort, so she calls in favors and tests out of three of her classes for the next year. She has enough credits to graduate already if she didn't have to take the math requirement, so she signs up for that plus two more history (she likes history, likes the patterns and the predictability and it boggles her mind that Harper and her cronies can sit through the class and do the homework and still not clue into the program, but whatever). She'll graduate a semester early, and miss out on Prom, but the things that mattered before just don't anymore, and she thinks that it should scare her but at this point there are much worse things to worry about, at any rate.

Justin takes her out to dinner to celebrate her grades, to her favorite sushi place in SoHo. (He hates sushi, and she knows this.) They talk about nothing that matters and he makes her laugh over and over and she doesn't think about Mom or the baby or whether Max has stopped bullying people smaller than him or just where the fuck Kelbo is and it's fun. Real fun, and she's almost forgotten what it feels like.

On the subway ride home, she hugs him tightly, holding on forever because if there's one thing she knows, it's that Justin will always take care of her no matter what, and she loves him so much she can barely stand it. (The man sitting in the car with them rolls his eyes and she knows he thinks that they're stupid teenagers on a date or something, but she doesn't care, she doesn't care.)

--

The first week of summer, she runs into TJ.

"I thought you got misplaced!" he explains and she winces, dragging him out of sight.

"You idiot," she hisses. "We're on a crowded street. Show a little discretion."

"Sorry," he says, looking sheepish.

They go back to Waverly Place and talk in the apartment, the buzz of the protection wards keeping their conversation safe.

"They couldn't take all of us," Alex explains. "So Justin and I stayed back with our uncle." (She leaves out the fact that there's been no sign of said uncle for over a month, now.)

"Wow," he says. "You're all on your own? That's so cool."

Alex raises an eyebrow. "Whatever you say."

Justin comes back from closing the shop to find them munching on popcorn and watching VH1. She can tell by the look on his face that he's annoyed.

"Hey, Justin," TJ says merrily.

"Hello." (Justin doesn't like TJ, he never has. Alex knows this.)

Later, he tells her to be careful. "You remember what he's like," he says. "He was even worse than you. It could be dangerous, being around him."

"Things are different now," she says. "There's no way he's still using magic like that all the time."

And it feels so good to have someone to talk to, someone who understands. (She has Justin, but things feel different – not bad, but not the same – since the sushi dinner and she doesn't know why.) They hang out constantly all summer and together manage to ignore everything that's happening in the real world (the anti-magic bill passes and it becomes officially illegal to be a wizard and the Harry Potter books are banned and Harper is on the local news station for putting together a charity auction where all the proceeds go to the Junior League and it's too, too much).

But one day, TJ leans in to kiss her halfway through the new Drew Barrymore movie and Alex is startled (she doesn't know why, in hindsight she should've seen it coming).

"I thought we could…" he shrugs uncomfortably. "You know." (If he can't even say it, then why is he trying to do it, she wonders.)

"I'm sorry," she says. "I just don't feel that way about you."

He nods enthusiastically but starts avoiding her calls. Then one day in late July she sees him at the grocery store and catches him using magic in public to reduce the price on a bag of Doritos.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" she hisses. "Are you trying to get yourself captured?"

He shoots her a dark look. "What do you care?" and storms off.

Later that night, she informs Justin that he is allowed to tell her 'I told you so'. Justin shakes his head and looks almost hurt. "Why would I do that?" he asks, and she doesn't really have an answer.

--

In the last leg of summer, Harper steps up her pursuit of Justin. She ignores Alex completely but comes into the diner every day and orders Diet Coke after Diet Coke, pretending to read some huge novel by a Russian author that Alex can't pronounce but really just waiting for the next time Justin stops by to refill her glass so she can try and capture him in conversation.

"Wow!" she says periodically as she 'reads' her book. "Holy cow, he sure showed that guy!"

"Does she know that she's supposed to be reading Dostoevsky?" Justin murmurs to Alex.

"Um, no," Alex replies. "Who the mackerel is Dustinesky?"

Justin grins at her. "Someone who doesn't make you go 'wow'. Unless you're Virigina Woolf, or something."

"Who?" Alex frowns.

Justin just laughs again and gives her table five's order.

After two weeks of this, Alex finally gets fed up and goes to talk to her. "Harper – "

"Refill, please, waitress." Harper shoves her glass in Alex's face.

Growling, Alex takes it and stomps back to the kitchen. "Can you just reject her already so she'll stop coming here?"

"I don't wanna be mean," Justin says, eyeing Harper, who is checking her lip gloss in the reflection from the napkin dispenser.

"I do," Alex replies.

"Just ignore her."

That night, Harper shows up at the apartment. Alex answers the door. "Hello," Harper says, chin lifted high. "I'm here to see Justin."

Alex regards her, unimpressed. "He's not here."

"Really?" Harper asks doubtfully. "We had plans."

Alex snorts. "No you didn't."

"Well – " Harper smoothes down her skirt. "F-fine. If you'll please tell him I stopped by."

"Yeah, whatever." Alex rolls her eyes, tired of it all.

Harper stops, turning back. "What is your problem?" she blurts, then claps her hand over her mouth.

"My problem?" Alex repeats slowly. "You want to know what my problem is?"

"Yeah." Harper straightens her shoulders and seems to grab onto her confidence. "Yeah – you up and cut me out of your life, and I know that you're too cool now to be friends with me or whatever, but you could at least give me an explanation!"

Alex narrows her eyes, a lump in her throat. Reaching out, she grabs the ever-present yellow and red eyesore on Harper's chest, flicking it with distaste. "Heil," she says, and slams the door.

(Harper stops coming to the restaurant, and when Alex tells Justin why, he laughs, because what else is there to do?)

--

"I think we might have to leave," Justin says. (School starts up in a week. NYU classes have been running since the last week of August, but Justin didn't reregister, and Alex didn't push it.)

"I have to graduate," Alex says.

"I know." Justin is balancing the books for the restaurant. Ever since the incident with Harper, business has fallen dramatically. Alex knows the reason for this, and so does Justin, but neither of them dares to speak it aloud. "We're not gonna have enough money to last even to Christmas if things keep going like this – even with what Mom and Dad left for us in the checking accounts."

They've been cutting corners everywhere, even pawning things from the apartment to cover the costs of living. Jerry had paid the rent through the summer (all the landlord had allowed him to do) but now time's up and the money's due, and after that check was cashed their coffers are looking pathetic. Justin snagged a barista job that pays fairly well (he knew a guy, apparently) but it still isn't enough and only serves to wear him out even more (she's been forcing him to sleep, staying in his room with him to make sure he doesn't get up in the middle of the night and obsess himself to death).

"Maybe I could get a job?" Alex floats.

Justin shakes his head. "No," he says, almost automatically. He clears his throat. "I, uh, need your help at the deli." (That's a lie, he's trying to spare her.)

"Justin, I can – "

"Look, forget I mentioned it." He nudges her knee with his foot. "We'll get by."

So school starts again, and regardless of the fact that she is only there for two and a half hours a day, she is still the subject of her classmates' derision and scorn and if she didn't know the reason for the decline in business before, she sure as hell does now.

("Witch," is the nasty hiss thrown at the back of her neck as she walks down the hallway, and a well-placed ankle sends her sprawling face first, but Alex Russo is stronger than this and if the Junior Leaguers want to see her cry then that's the absolute last thing they'll ever get, ever.)

Halfway through September, a crackling tension snaps into place and Alex can practically taste it as she wades through the masses on the streets (perpetually against the crowd, she's always going the wrong way) and a quick, necessary look at the Junior League website informs her of the reason.

A demonstration, at Bryant Park. She shows Justin a flyer and he nods. "It's important, whatever it is," he says. "I heard something about it at work."

Against her better judgment, they show up, a Saturday morning that seems way too cold for New York in the autumn. They stand in the back, half-hidden amongst the crowd and watch as Ryan Simmons himself (he's practically a celebrity at this point) stands at the forefront of the crowd, a megaphone in his hand.

"Today is the day that the tide changes," he booms. "Today is the day when they can no longer hide." His face glitters with malice and Alex shivers.

"What are they talking about?" Justin whispers to no one.

"We call it the Sonar," Simmons boasts. "A device, a portable, hand-held radar system that will alarm its holder to any magic within a fifteen-foot radius!" The crowd roars and Alex leans against Justin, suddenly breathless. "And since we know that every _witch_ has magic in their blood, it will point out the sinners themselves – "

He waves his hand to a few people standing behind them, and movement from the back of the stage catches Alex's attention.

"This is a _demonstration,_ after all," Simmons says. "Come."

"Oh my God," Alex chokes. "Oh my _God,_ TJ." Horror clogs her throat and Justin grabs her waist to keep her from falling.

TJ is wrestled out onto the stage, held in place by two burly-looking men with yellow and red badges on their chests. His head swivels around madly, looking half-crazed with panic.

"Alex," Justin whispers fiercely. "Alex, don't. Don't do anything. We can't." She nods and bites her fist.

Simmons pulls an ugly looking black box from his pocket, holding it up to the crowd. "Soon, the Sonar will be available at every department store in America and you too, will be able to identify the false ones – " (crowd cheering, cheering, cheering)

Simmons flips a switch and points it in the direction of TJ. A malicious smirk spreads over his face and he unclips the microphone from his shirt collar and holds it to the box. The sound magnifies, a shrill beeping emitting from the loudspeakers, mixing with the chants of the crowd.

("Witch, witch, witch, witch – ")

"Alex, come on." Justin half-carries, half-drags her away. "Come on." ("Witch, witch, witch, witch," and TJ is dragged backstage and how can this happen, how can this be happening, somebody please, just please – )

--

"We have to _go_," Alex is screaming. "We have to go _now,_ Justin, didn't you see? They have _sonar._ They can _find_ us." She pulls clothes from her closet blindly, throwing them onto her bed.

"Alex, we can't." Justin grabs for her arms but she rips away with a cry, flinging herself back at her closet. "Alex, stop. Stop!"

She strikes out and hits his chest. "Get away from me!"

"Cut it out, right now." He grabs her wrists and pins them to her sides. "Take a _breath._"

She bites her lip and stops struggling. "TJ," she whispers.

"I know." He kisses her forehead and leans his chin on the top of her head. "We will go," he says softly, once her breath has evened out. "But we can't go right now." She starts to protest but he slides his hands up to her shoulders, squeezing gently. "There's a reason that demonstration was public, Alex. They're trying to smoke us out. If we go right now then they'll _know,_ and we'll never get away."

She closes her eyes and presses her face to his neck. "So what do we do?" she whispers.

"We stay." He grips her tightly. "You finish the semester, get your diploma. Then we'll leave – that was the plan all along, remember? To move to Mom and Dad after you graduated?" He swallows and she can feel it against her forehead. "Make it look normal."

She nods. "We don't know where they are," she replies. "We don't know where Kelbo is, either."

Justin is silent for a long moment, and his arms go all the way around her in a hug. "They don't know that," he says softly.

(They stand there for a lifetime, just breathing and existing, and she finally realizes that things will never, ever be the same, ever again.)

--

Alex spends the rest of the semester in a kind of crazed daze. Years from now, she will remember nothing of the last three months of her high school career, only vague impressions of books and work and tension and Justin, Justin, Justin.

The last day of school before Christmas break, her history teacher hands her her final grade and a novel by a man named Elie Wiesel. "For faith," the teacher says, with a small smile. Alex presses it to her chest and feels her heart lift, just for a second.

She receives her diploma without ceremony and tells the principal she won't be walking with her class in the spring, she's moving to her new home with her family to think about college and thank you for all your help, really (she chokes a bit as she speaks because she realizes that she won't know where she'll be come graduation day, she really really doesn't).

They sell most everything left in the apartment. Justin had broken the protection wards the day after the Sonar demonstration and as Alex packs her lone suitcase she realizes there really is nothing left of who they are save the power thrumming in their veins (she can feel Justin's power just as clearly as she feels her own, and it's a reminder of something, she's not sure).

Justin has sold the restaurant already and it is now a burger joint, the street-sign tables that her mother had designed ripped out and replaced with tacky red, glittery plastic. Justin takes the money from the sale and the returned security deposit from the landlord and puts it into an account under a fake name and keeps two hundred in cash in small bills in their suitcases. They leave in the middle of the night, climbing into the used car that she'd found cheap on Long Island the month before and they drive, drive away, each breath flowing easier the more distance that elapses between them and the city.

They sleep in cheap motels and pay in cash under fake names, staying under the radar as much as possible because they're not sure what else to do. They run out of cash in Maryland and get a decent hotel room under the fake account name. Justin and Alex Russo become Brian Dennings and Kate Voss. (They're not related anymore, officially, and Justin makes her cut her hair short and he wears fake glasses, because the Sonar has been released full-scale and wizards are disappearing and they just can't be sure, they just can't.)

They stay in Maryland for a week, long enough to establish a cover story for anyone who's interested and then head west. Justin is looking for signals that were taught to him by Kelbo, signals of other wizards, of help.

They stop in Indianapolis to celebrate Justin's twentieth birthday. Alex scores some champagne with one of the fake IDs she'd snagged before leaving New York and they drink it in a hotel room, the TV off and knees touching on the bed.

"Congratulations, _Brian_," she says. "You are no longer a teenager."

He laughs bitterly. "Don't think I've been one for a while, _Kate_."

Their funds run low in Kansas so they stop in Topeka to form a game plan.

"I've always wanted to see Colorado," Alex muses thoughtfully.

Justin shrugs. "Good a place as any, I guess."

Alex flops onto the bed next to him, flipping her now-choppy bangs out of her eyes. "What are we gonna do?" she asks. "I mean…we can't keep doing this forever."

The unspoken topic of the Registration Act floats between them, the new initiative to use Sonars to weed out the 'magicals' from the 'normals' (Alex thinks of numbers on forearms and she still can't _believe_ this is happening) and create a master list of every witch and wizard in the nation, locked up for "safekeeping" (yeah right).

"If we have to go underground, we will," Justin says firmly. He grins and raises an eyebrow at her from his spot on the floor. "Literally. We could live under the ocean. Or in a volcano."

"On a mountain," she corrects, moving her leg so it touches his shoulder. "On the top of the highest mountain. We'll magic ourselves up a cabin and never leave."

He smiles sadly and leans his forehead against her shin.

They make it to Denver and get a small apartment and tell everyone they're newlyweds and Alex dyes her hair red (if they're looking for brunette siblings, they won't find them here). Justin gets a job at a library that actually pays pretty well, and Alex starts waitressing (don't tell anyone, but she kind of likes it).

They save half their money each month in case they have to run again, and for a little bit, things are kind of nice. After her shifts, Alex will walk to the library where Justin works and sit at a table behind the corner with him, reading history books and novels. She buries herself in suffrage rallies in the twenties and slave plantations in the nineteenth century and revolutions and political back-and-forths an ocean and a lifetime away, and she can feel Justin's eyes on her tying her to the present, keeping her anchored, keeping her real.

A couple months in, a man in his mid-twenties starts noticing her at the diner where she works, coming in when he knows she'll be working and sitting in her section. She is politely distant and when he finally asks her out, she turns him down gently. (A year ago she would've at least wanted to, but she doesn't even consider it now, and she isn't sure if it's because of this quiet lifestyle they're desperately trying to maintain or because of something different, something Justin-flavored. One thing that hasn't changed: she doesn't like to self-analyze.) She shows him the cheap ring Justin had gotten her for the sake of their cover story and the guy seems fine with it. At first, anyway.

He shows up again the next day, sitting in another waitress's section but his eyes on her the whole time, and Alex runs around pouring coffee and taking orders, trying to escape the chill chasing her spine.

She works a double-shift, covering for a sick coworker and leaves the diner at sunset, bone-aching tired. Heading for the bus stop, she isn't paying attention when she should be and therefore is taken by surprise when hands grab her waist and drag her back behind the building.

Her persistent suitor is different in the dim light, shadows elongating the violence in his face and Alex feels so small, so weak, so, so stupid, and Justin is going to _kill_ her if she gets herself hurt, she just knows it.

"Hey, girlie," he says and she shudders. He pushes her against the brick and she feels her skin scrape itself raw. She kicks at him, pushes against his chest, but he's too strong, too large. "Dirty witch," he says, grunting and grabbing her wrists.

A surge of rage erupts in her chest and she grows still. "Witch," she hisses back, and her eyes flash with power and she remembers her father's hands shaking and an all-nighter and the alleyway erupts with green light before her world turns to inky black.

When she comes to, her would-be rapist is crumpled in a heap at the other end of the alley and the whole place smells like smoke and magic. She looks around and the street is still empty – she must've only been out a few seconds – and so she rises and runs, runs all the way to Justin's library, tears clogging her vision and tattered shirt flapping around singed flesh.

Justin nearly freaks when he sees her, dragging her into the back office and touching her face, her arms, over and over as if to reassure himself that she's okay. He sees the scrapes on her back and frowns, pulling off his soft cotton jacket and wrapping it around her as she explains what happened in a monotone voice.

"We have to go," she says, "tonight."

He nods and kisses her nose. "You did what you had to do," he says, and something tight unravels because he's not mad (though she doesn't know why she thought he would be).

They pack up their apartment and ditch the car and buy bus tickets to Santa Fe with cash and just like that, they're running again.

--

In Oklahoma City, they are Austin and Dana Torres, cousins. They stay for three weeks and just when they're considering setting down roots for longer, a wizard is captured downtown and arrested for public display of magic. They take the next train out.

They go to Dallas as Austin and Dana, still, and buy a car. Then in Beaumont they become Will and Christine Sarasota, newlyweds again. They drive all night and land in Baton Rougeand rent an apartment right on the river.

Alex (or Chris, whatever, she can hardly tell the difference anymore) starts work at a local museum, manning the front desk, answering phones and selling tickets. Her interest in history finally paying off, she gets cleared after a month to give small, short tours (they're scripted but she doesn't care because it's something she did all by herself, something real and something serious and people look at her with respect if they look at her at all, and at this point that's the most she's hoping for anyway).

Justin (Will) snags work at a bookshop, managing the books and stocking inventory. They start saving up again, funneling half their paychecks each month into their various accounts, knowing without having to voice it that nothing is permanent, not anymore.

Alex turns twenty and this time, Justin buys the champagne (he's legal by now, after all). They take turns drinking out of the bottle as they sit on the puny balcony of their apartment, legs hanging over the edge of the railing as they look out over the Mississippi, a glittering mystery in the thick Southern night.

"The baby must be three years old now," Alex muses. The champagne they're drinking isn't nearly enough to get them wasted, and she suddenly wishes that they were the type of people who get drunk. "Max is fifteen. In high school."

"Yeah." Justin sets the champagne bottle between them on the cement. "They must think we're dead." Or worse, goes unsaid.

"Fucking Kelbo." Alex shakes her head. "I wish we knew what happened."

Justin sighs. "No use obsessing about it."

"Didn't I used to be the one who said that?" Alex grins and chugs the last of the champagne. Justin grants her a smile. "What will happen with our…you know? If we're separated from Max we can't have the battle. Not to mention the baby."

"I don't know," Justin says. "Magic is a funny thing." He pauses and tilts his head. He's grown a beard in the last few months and it elongates his face, aging him five years. Alex's boss at the museum thinks he's a cradle robber. "I don't know."

Two months later, they move on. After staying in one spot for almost two years without incident, they're both itchy and paranoid and the urge to move is too strong to ignore. They decide north, and drive for two days straight until they reach Minneapolis and change their names to Jonathan and Melissa Marks. Justin has a contact in Duluth who gets them fake paperwork this time, so Justin is able to use a falsified Boston College degree to get a proper job at an insurance company, using his finely honed accounting skills to balance the books and manage payroll. Alex sticks with her history thing, using her own fake degree to get a job as a docent at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Justin turns twenty-two and they celebrate again, dressing up and eating downtown at a fancy restaurant. Alex does her hair like she used to when it was long, ironed straight and flat, and the spiky tips of her perpetually short hair barely reach her chin. It's dark blonde now, and she feels like Ashlee Simpson. (All she needs is a nose job.)

"I don't think I've seen you with straight hair since New York," he says when she emerges from the bathroom. He flicks her bangs away from her face. "You usually look like a street urchin."

"You're one to talk," she shoots back, looking pointedly at his beard.

He looks offended, rubbing it. "I trim it daily, I'll have you know." She sticks her tongue out at him and he pretends to sulk during the entire cab ride there.

The restaurant reminds her of the sushi place in SoHo and Justin pulls out her chair for her and tells her to order whatever she wants and keeps looking up at her over his menu and suddenly Alex realizes that this is a _date._ (So she's slow on the uptake, it's not like she was looking out for this.)

She has a mini-panic attack in her head before remembering that life is all about running and she hasn't seen her family in three and a half years and the world is a monumentally sucky and terrifying place and oh yeah, she doesn't really give a shit, anyway. (So there's that.)

They both order dishes they can't pronounce and share with each other, and Justin's is so spicy that when she snags a forkful her eyes water and he laughs as she downs the rest of her wine in one gulp, staring at him incredulously when he gulps down a huge bite without so much as a blink.

They forgo a cab and walk back to their apartment. Alex is tipsy from the wine and he has to keep reminding her to call him Jon – "Justin, Jon, it's practically the same," and when they reach their apartment building she pulls him underneath the eave above the door and wraps her arms around his neck in the shadows.

"Alex," Justin says, startled.

"Mel," she corrects him, one eyebrow raised.

He narrows his eyes at her and she looks, looks, because she can't have read this wrong – no, she didn't. There is nothing in the world that she knows better than Justin – his face, his body, his head, his mind, his heart – and the hugeness of it swells up in her chest until she can hardly breathe.

His eyebrows come together and she suddenly feels his hands on her back, on the space where her dress opens below her neck, between her shoulder blades, and she thinks of fate and sushi and champagne and history books as his mouth comes to rest on hers.

(Something that's been out of place her entire life shifts into alignment with a gentle click and it could all be worth it if it could stay like this – just like this.)

--


	3. III: Underground

--

**III: Underground.**

--

The Registration Act passes a month later.

She hears the news bulletin at work. Alex's first instinct is to panic and then she remembers to make it normal and finishes the rest of the day. She meets Justin in the elevator to their apartment and as soon as the doors close she's in his arms and she can feel him shaking. (Things are going to change again, forever, and she's starting to become familiar with how it feels.)F

They pack as little as possible and leave in the dead of the night. They stop in Mankato and clean out all their accounts, keeping the cash scattered throughout their bags – two suitcases and Alex's purse – and head for Iowa – small towns, and there hasn't been a wizard captured in the state as of yet, so the Junior League presence is weak. They drive and drive and drive and finally stop in DeSoto, a puny town with one motel, and sit on the shitty carpet and weigh their options.

"We could take the risk and do a transporting spell," says Justin. "It'd turn this place into a media circus and they'd probably figure out who we are eventually, but we'd be gone." He pauses. "Wherever we go – Mars, Mount Everest, the Marianna Trench – we'll have to stay there though. For a long time."

"All of the obvious places are probably packed full of other wizards, too." Alex nods. "And there's option two: the network."

"Yeah." Justin has slowly built up a solid network of contacts over the years, wizards and magic sympathizers that form a sort of information underground railroad. He'd been keeping ear out for news on Kelbo or the rest of their family, but there'd been nothing at all so eventually, he'd stopped asking.

But it gives them options – misplacement, for one. There have also been whispers of resistance that Alex has largely ignored (hope is dangerous).

"What have we got to lose?" she asks. "Misplacement would take less power – draw no attention – and we might even get a chance for some peace and quiet."

"It'd be somewhere in Europe," he says. "Registration isn't an option over there yet. France, or Germany, most likely – anti-magic organizations have very little support there."

Alex feels her confidence boost slightly. "So – misplacement."

"Misplacement," Justin repeats and grabs her hand.

(They don't talk about what happened on his birthday, but they've started asking for single rooms.)

--

They meet Justin's contact, a wiry, ratty looking kid named Ben (he can't be more than eighteen) at a fondue place in Des Moines.

"My big brother beat the pants offa me at our battle," he says, dipping a piece of beef into the batter. "So no powers – I still got a little bit, though, enough to set off a real deep Sonar scan."

Justin gives Alex a 'keep quiet' look and so she stuffs her mouth full of bread and trusts him to do the talking.

"We need to do this quick," Justin says. "We both have full powers – we'd never make it past a scan. It's only pure luck that we've stayed below the radar sweeps this long."

Ben nods, dripping food all over the tablecloth. "I feel you, I feel you." He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a business card with a handwritten address on the back. "I got a guy in Cedar Rapids who can set you up – name's Cal. Be there tomorrow morning and we'll get you lovebirds on your way."

Alex darts a look at Justin, who takes the card carefully, avoiding the cheese stains. "Thanks."

"No problem." Ben wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve and turns sober for a second. "We stick together. Period."

Justin nods solemnly and shakes his hand, grease stains be damned.

They check out of the hotel that night and drive up after dark, parking a block away from the address at a Perkins and take turns taking naps in the backseat. At sunrise, they consolidate their vital valuables into the smallest suitcase – cash, keepsakes, essential clothing items (no way is Alex getting misplaced to another country without clean underwear) – and ditch the car, walking over as the sun climbs over the foggy horizon.

They stand outside the door for a second, on the edge of a new life once again, and Alex turns to look at Justin and discovers that he's already looking back at her.

"So," she says.

"So," he says back, and pushes open the door.

--

It's an office, essentially. Alex isn't sure why she's surprised.

Cubicles are set up in the huge, run-down warehouse and busy-looking people rush around with stacks of files and folders, serious and determined looks on their faces. Alex realizes with a start that each and every one has a wand strapped to their leg or arm, and tears rush to her eyes.

"Jon and Mel?" a man asks, stopping his busy stride momentarily. Justin nods. "Thought so. Follow me." He rushes off again and they rush to follow – Justin placing one hand on the small of Alex's back (anchoring her, keeping her real). All over the walls are small, round pieces of metal that shine and shimmer in the light, giving off a faint purple glow, ("Magic detectors," Justin explains under his breath. "They probably ID'd us hours ago.")

They stop at a cubicle and the man deposits them in the small chairs, telling them to wait a few moments and Mr. Cal will be right with them, and Alex blows her bangs out of her eyes as the unnamed man scurries off again. "Is it weird that this all weirds me out?"

"No," he replies. "This is weird."

Mr. Cal turns out to be a huge truck of a man, as big around as Justin and Alex combined. They have to rise and move the chairs out of the way to make room for him to get to his desk, and the chair gives a dangerous sounding creak as he settles his heavy bulk into it.

"Jonathan and Melissa Marks," he says, whiskey-roughened voice softened by the felt-covered walls. "Fake names?" Justin and Alex stay blank-faced. "All right, I won't push." He grins and clicks a few things on his computer. "Ah, here we are. Your friend Ben has set you up already, real nice." He squints and whistles low, under his breath. "Both of you have active powers?" he asks, sounding impressed. "You must have been shadows the past few years."

"Something like that," Justin says.

Cal smirks. "All right – any preference on names?"

Justin looks at Alex, who shrugs. She stopped caring after Dana. "She needs something with a good nickname," he offers. "Me – I don't care."

Cal clicks his tongue and scrolls down with his mouse. "You guys speak Spanish?"

Alex winces. "No," she says quickly. (What little comprehension they'd picked up from Theresa has long faded, and it's a sore issue anyway.)

"That can be fixed," Cal says. "With the misplacement spells."

"No Spain," Justin says firmly. "Any other country is fine – just not Spanish."

Cal shrugs. "Kay. Italy?" Justin shrugs. "Italy it is." He clicks a few times and types once, twice, and snaps his fingers. "Voila. Daniela and Ettore Esposito, welcome to your new life." He digs out his wand and spreads his arms apart, pausing to blink at them. "You might wanna grab your bag. And each other."

"Oh. Oh!" Alex latches onto Justin's arm. "We're going right now. Okay."

Justin grabs the suitcase and rises, bringing Alex along with him. "Here we go, Daniela."

"Yeah, okay, Entrino. Etano. Entrée. Wait, what was his name – "

White light bursts behind their eyelids as Cal brings his arms together and a burst of power erupts from his wand, enveloping them in its warmth, and a soft golden glow envelops them both, leading them gently down into the darkness.

--

When Alex opens her eyes, a rutted ceiling greets her. Gasping, she lurches up in bed and starts calling for Justin, but when she speaks, strange sounds emit from her mouth.

"You're awake."

"You're speaking Italian!" Alex turns and sees Justin standing by an old-fashioned looking bureau, rummaging around in the drawers. "Wait, so am I. And I understand it!"

"We are Italian, now." He pulls a shirt from the drawer triumphantly and yanks it over his head, turning around to grin at her. She gasps at the sight of his face – tanned and rugged, his beard is gone but his face is leaner, more elongated, hair longer and falling into his face. It's unmistakably still Justin, but a different version, somehow. Chuckling, he gestures to the mirror mounted on the wall. "Take a look at yourself."

Scrambling out of the bed – what is she wearing, a – a nightgown, wow – she approaches the mirror and gasps again. "Oh my God."

Her hair is long once more, tumbling down around her shoulders in light brown waves. Her face is rounder, more heart-shaped and her eyebrows are thinner (no more waxing, thank God!) and her lips slightly fuller. Her nose is longer, and when she bares her teeth, dimples appear on her cheeks.

"Holy crap," she says. "This is unreal."

"I know." He raises an eyebrow. "Alex through the looking glass."

"Daniela," she corrects with a smile.

"Ettore," he replies.

She grins at him and claps her hands. "Oh, this is gonna be cool."

--

They live in a fairly large city in Southern Italy. Alex (Daniela) is a graphic designer and Justin (Ettore) is a teacher. She laughs when they discover this in their downloaded memories and tells him that it's fitting.

It's a strange sensation, as if she's led two completely different lives. She remembers New York as a child, remembers the naïve bliss of magic lessons with her father and the years before the Discovery and capture of the Unknown Wizard – but she also remembers working on a farm in rural Italy, moving to the city and meeting Ettore (Justin) – a wedding on the beach, a life far away from cheap motels and news bulletins and the acrid scent of magic searing through hair and flesh.

She and Justin search through the small flat that they own, finding a mixture of Ettore-and-Daniela belongings as well as the contents of that small suitcase they'd rescued back in Iowa. Alex finds the Elie Wiesel novel from her history teacher buried in a drawer with jewelry inherited from Daniela's grandmother, and a picture of Theresa and Jerry in the photo album full of Ettore's (fictional) grandparents, and all her cheap, quiet clothes from the road mixed in with soft Italian cotton and gauzy silk.

They spend the first few weeks in a sort of daze, testing the waters of their new life and slowly letting themselves unravel. Alex heads in for her first day of work with knots in her stomach, but as soon as she hits the door a rush of familiarity and memory washes over her, and it's like riding a bike – a long forgotten instinct that's been hiding below the surface of her consciousness. (She always did have an eye for color and form, and she finds herself enjoying it just as much – maybe more – than her museum work back at in the States.)

Justin, she knows, takes to his job right away as well. She leaves work early and comes to see his classroom one day, sitting in the back and grinning when his students whistle at her playfully.

He's patient and kind with the children but doesn't hesitate to be a hard-ass when he needs to be (she thinks of spell-review sheets and his whistle, on a piece of twine around his neck and giggles to herself). She can tell he loves it by the way he sleeps so deeply at night, his legs twined with hers in their bed beneath the window (the Italian moon is their guardian and it keeps them encased in its glow and she's never felt safer).

And they have friends. (It's become a novel concept.) It's not like they're incredibly popular, but there's a teacher named Eve who teaches at Justin's school who brings her Polish fiancé over to drink wine and watch soccer (er, football) matches on their small television, and the old woman who lives in the flat below them brings them pasta and chicken on the nights when they both work late.

And slowly, it's as if Justin and Alex fade completely and there's nothing but Daniela and Ettore, who have nothing to do with the silly business in America about magic spells and witch nonsense, who are a world and a half away, and when she comes home he's already there with dinner bubbling on the stove and they'll take it out onto the patio and kiss as the sun sets and they never speak English anymore.

(She doesn't want to trust it, but she does anyway.)

--

On the morning of Justin's twenty-fifth birthday, Alex wakes up without her powers.

It's a strange feeling, and she lurches up in bed, gasping for air. There's a sucking hole in her chest and her vision spins so violently that she has to lean her head between her knees to keep from getting sick. Justin's there, his big hand on the back of her neck, and when she finally gains control of her stomach she realizes she's weeping.

He pulls her into a hug and she's grateful, she needs to touch him, needs to know he's still there, that he didn't fade away because she can't feel him anymore, can't feel anything and she feels blunt, dull, like an unsharpened pencil.

"How," she sputters, "how?" He shakes his head and holds her tighter.

When she calms down, she lies down on the bed and he holds a wet cloth to her forehead.

"You still have them," she says quietly. He nods silently and she processes this. "_How?_ I don't understand."

His forehead crinkles. "I don't either," he says. He rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Magic is a funny thing."

She bites her lip and grabs his arm, pulling him to lay down with her. Burying her face in his neck, she whispers into his skin, "don't go to work today," and he buries his hands in her hair.

She spends two weeks straight shut up in the apartment, trying to figure out how she feels. Physically, it's a startling change. The world seems less colorful, somehow, less vibrant, as if with the loss of her magical senses the other five have dulled as well. She feels itchy and restless, rubbing at her skin like it doesn't fit and she can't sleep without the comfort of the thrum of energy beneath her skin.

Half the time she's desperate to keep Justin in her sight, as if he'll disappear if she doesn't see him and it terrifies her because she can't _feel_ him, can't sense his presence and she won't know – if something happens – she won't _know._ The other half she's spitting angry, furious at him for being spared the conflict. She throws a bowl of soup at him in her fury and then collapses at his feet, weeping and begging him to stay, don't leave, never leave her alone, ever, she can't take it, and she knows he's terrified in how gently he picks her up (he's never gentle, it's not what she needs. Usually).

He's close to calling in for help, despite the danger of drawing attention to themselves when she awakes in the middle of the night, the light of the moon bathing the entire apartment in cool blueness. She arises and walks to the balcony, drawn by its light and stares out at the sliver of ocean she can see, the land, the buildings and cars and cobbled streets all colored in shades of moon, and cries for it, cries at the beauty and the tragedy.

It's in that moment that she sees the magic in the moon, the magic of light and shadow, of nature and water and earth. She holds her arms out and feels the moonlight on her skin and thinks of everyone in America, terrified of the unknown and manifesting their fear into violence and hate, so blind to the wonder and the magnificence. Because there's magic in the night and in the human heart, and for the first time in her life, Alex doesn't need a wand to feel connected to the world.

She stops crying and starts laughing, and when Justin wakes up, they make love for the first time, and it doesn't feel wrong at all.

(How can beauty be wrong? How can love? She thinks, teetering on the edge between her heart and his, and now she knows the answers. Brother, lover, it doesn't matter because he is love, he is life, and this isn't anything but what it is, and what it is is breathtaking.)

--

There's a new surge of energy that she's riding on, the energy of realization and passion. She feels tension she never knew she had loosening, unraveling, and for the first time she wakes up most mornings feeling truly and incredibly _free._

Justin is bemused and a little wary, but she feels as light as air, bright as the sun that wakes her each morning. She starts shopping again, renewing the old lost love for color and vibrancy and expression and dresses in breezy sundresses every day that bring out the light in her eyes and the shine of her skin.

And when she looks at him she sees something different, something new. There is no longer any hesitation in her embrace, no piece of herself held back. They've been so many people in the years since leaving New York that it's hard to pin down one compared to another – Jon, Brian, Austin, Will, Ettore, Justin – it all just feels irrelevant because he's alive and she's alive, and they're safe and he makes her feel like the best version of herself, like the person she'd always dreamed of becoming.

She tries to explain it to him but just ends up confusing him more, so she just laughs and tells him not to worry about her, that it's her turn to take care of them now. He frowns at her and she laughs again (oh, how she's missed laughter).

He seems almost tentative with her, unsure of how long this new mood will last or what it means. She knows that he feels guilty for still having powers when she doesn't, and for not knowing why, but she doesn't know exactly what to say to make him understand that it doesn't matter to her, not anymore.

"Do you think Max still has his?" she asks one morning at breakfast. "And the baby?"

He sighs. "I don't think so."

"How do you know?"

He shifts uncomfortably. "I – I feel different. Centered, almost, and stronger. I think this is for good – like how it would've felt if I'd won the battle."

She chews on a croissant thoughtfully. "Maybe you did."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "What?"

"Well, magic's a funny thing, right?" She shrugs and props her feet up on his lap. "Maybe we did have a battle – just a different kind of one, you know?" She smiles softly.

He looks pensive. "Maybe."

(The thing is, she kind of always knew it'd be him, anyway.)

--

One benefit of her new powerless state is another type of freedom that they hadn't even considered before.

"I can pass through scans now," she points out to him. "Not any of the deep, full body ones, but the basic ones they do at the border? I'd sail right through."

He tenses up and shoots her a glare. "You're not thinking of going back to the States."

She shrugs. "I could."

"Why would you even want to?"

She traces the seam in his shirt and avoids his gaze. "There are things I could…do."

"Things." He nudges her shoulder, makes her look at him. "Resistance things."

She raises an eyebrow. "They're dying for people like me."

"It's too dangerous." He shakes his head and shuffles the papers he's grading nervously, restlessly. "No."

She sees the panic in his face and drops the subject, considering her options. A few weeks later, she risks it and brings it up again.

"Not the Resistance, then," she says. "But…the network." He looks unconvinced. "They need people like Ben, people who can pass." She slides into his lap and presses her hands to his face. "I feel like I have to, Justin." The use of his given name is a shock, enough to make him pause (they haven't been anything but Dani and Ettore to each other for a long time, now).

"I don't like it." He shakes his head. "You'd have to be on your own – " he takes in a deep breath. "I don't like it."

"What would've happened to us if you hadn't found Ben?" she asks softly. "I can be that for somebody else. I can help people like he helped us." He looks stricken and her heart lurches. She presses her smooth cheek to his rough one and slows her breathing to match the rise and fall of his shoulders. "It's my turn to fight," she whispers (and she can almost feel him understanding).

--

The political landscape in Italy is a thousand times looser than the States, and while it's still necessary to keep a low profile, the atmosphere is low-key and laid back, and in certain parts of the South, even borders on welcoming. Only their paranoia had kept them from getting involved with the underground magical community until now, and so Alex is able to quietly involve herself with a group of wizards working with the misplacement network in the northwest United States.

The head honcho is a British wizard named Jackson whose thick eyebrows dart to the top of his skull when she tells him that she has no active powers.

"You're shitting me," he says, and she shakes her head. "Well, bloody hell, what took you so long to get here?"

She quirks a smile and shrugs.

Her misplacement spells, the ones that gave her her new face and her fluent understanding of Italian, make it hard for her to get used to speaking English again, but she manages it with Justin's help.

He still doesn't like it, especially when she tells him that they'll want her to travel to the States at least once a year. They have a raging fight about it, the biggest one they've had in years.

"One wrong move and they'll have you locked up in Guantanamo Bay, Alex!" He's so funny sometimes, he cleans when he's pissed off, and she watches with crossed arms as he scrubs angrily at the tile grout in the bathroom counter. "Just because your powers aren't active doesn't mean they're not _there._"

"And just because it doesn't affect us anymore doesn't mean it isn't happening," Alex shoots back. "Did you know that they've started airing sentencings on television, now? They're literal witch trials."

He chokes a bit and looks sick. "Dani – "

"I can't sit around and do nothing – I just can't. I've been following you around since we left New York – "

"Hey," he says, hurt blooming on his face. "What are you – "

"Ugh, no. No, that's – " she puts a hand on her forehead. "I'm not accusing you of anything. If you hadn't taken care of things we'd be dead right now." She takes a breath. "It's my turn. That's all I'm saying."

He throws the cloth he's been using aside and collapses against the shower door. "Are you doing this because you want to, or because you can?"

She sucks in a sharp breath at the jab. "I want to. And I feel like I have to." He looks doubtful and she sighs. "Fine. Don't believe me, but for whatever reason, it doesn't matter because I'm going to be helping people, period."

"At what cost?" he flings at her back, and she slams the door on his voice.

Three days of charged silence later, he grabs her wrist as she walks by the bed to the balcony, pulling her down into the warmth of the blankets.

"You're it, Alex."

"Dani," she corrects.

"Dani, Mel, Alex, whoever." He moulds his hands to her back and rubs his chin against her bare shoulder, making her shiver like he knows she likes. "I don't know what I'd do if – "

"I know." She turns the choice over in her head for the millionth time. "I have to do this. Even if I can only help one person, just one – I just have to."

He chokes a little, but nods.

(And her heart breaks just a little, because she know that it's a small betrayal, going somewhere that he can't, and she knows he won't hold it against her but it's a betrayal all the same.)

--

Jackson sends her to the States for the first time that winter, directing her to pick up a family in Connecticut.

"Things are getting tighter," he says. "We can't risk using enough power to transport them as well as misplace them. We can get them new identities – change their face, their name, give them a new, quiet place to belong, but they've got to actually _get_ there the human way."

She nods and pretends she's not terrified by hiding her shaking hands in her pockets.

Justin doesn't take it well, as expected. He doesn't get mad but works late every night for a week and when she does see him he's quiet and unresponsive.

The day before she leaves, she's home at lunch packing her suitcase and he storms into the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

"Ett – " he cuts her off with his mouth, slamming her against the bedroom wall and pressing his hands into her body. Before she has time to react he's gone, backing away and cursing under his breath. "Holy shit."

"Sorry." He scrubs his hands over his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, please." She takes a breath and adjusts her dress, slipping the strap back into place on her shoulder. They haven't crossed the line since That Night and the perpetual ache that lurks beneath her skin triples in intensity, weakening her knees and turning her hands into jitters.

"I shouldn't – " he shakes his head. "We – "

She wilts a little in the face of his obvious conflict. "It didn't matter to you before."

"Alex – "

"Dani," she corrects sharply. "My name is Dani. You are Ettore. We're _married._" She grabs her left hand and twists the wedding band, the one she remembers him sliding on her finger but knows isn't real, not really. Tears clogging her throat, she jerks over to the suitcase and resumes packing, throwing clothes around haphazardly.

"Stop." She feels him come up behind her, taking the dresses and shirts from her hands. "They'll get all wrinkled."

She snorts as he starts to fold for her. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does." He has such concentration for every action that he performs, such singular attention. She recalls that attention flavored in moonlight and focused solely on her, and she shivers and wants to cry. She wants it, wants to be under his eyes all the time, every second of every day, because it makes her feel electrified, makes her feel safe, makes her feel real.

She watches him fold, and fold, and fold, and thinks, fuck it.

Sliding into the space between him and the bed, she flips the suitcase closed and hops on top of it. "It doesn't matter," she says again, and his eyes change. She pulls him in by his shirt collar and wraps her legs around his waist.

"Doesn't matter," he repeats, and they fall backwards into softness.

--

She lands in Boston and presses her hands to her chest, watching as the border guards move slowly down the aisles of the planes, sonar boxes flashing yellow in their hands.

She schools her face to look bored and uninterested as they reach her row, flipping through the in-flight magazine and thinks, forgive me, Justin, please, I love you, please, but the guard barely spares her a glance and suddenly all the breath leaves her body in one long rush.

She floats through her assignment, meeting the family she's helping escape at a diner in Hartford and smuggling them onto a private jet headed for their new home in Cannes, France. She feels almost giddy as she watches the plane fly away and a rush of want nearly brings her to her knees – Ettore, she thinks, or Justin, whatever – she wants to see him, wants to feel him, touch him, be near him, and with in a sudden, 'duh' moment, realizes that the yearning she feels is the yearning for home.

But her cover story is a graphic design conference in New York City so she'll have to stay for another three days, driving up in her rental car (she remembers driving these highways with him, they'd fight over the radio and she'd read to him sometimes to keep him awake while he drove) and this will be the first time, she thinks, stepping foot in the city she grew up in since their great escape when she was eighteen years old.

She's twenty-six now, an entirely different person (literally) but still the same in a few ways, and she hasn't thought of her family in years.

A sudden wave of guilt hits her and she recalls the last time she saw her parents, how her mother had called them her queridas and her father had told them to stick together. How Max had hugged them both at the same time, and how she'd cried as they'd driven away.

She wonders if she's a bad person, if it says something dark about her that she hasn't thought of them in so long, that she'd stopped wondering a long time ago. She thinks of the cubicles in Iowa, thinks of Mr. Cal and how they could've asked them about Theresa and Jerry – or Kelbo, at least – but didn't – didn't even think of it. She tries to picture their faces and it's fuzzy, tries to remember what it felt like to be a part of a larger unit than just her and Justin, but she can't.

Her hotel room is in Manhattan, a far cry from Waverly Place. She sits in the room and stares at the skyline and tries to decide and comes up with nothing. She thinks of calling Justin but knows it would just make him worry (and maybe set them back, maybe undo something she doesn't want undone) so she shrugs and grabs her purse and heads for the subway.

Her hands shake violently as she walks down a street that is so familiar yet so strange, and when she reaches the Waverly Place sign she has to duck into a Starbucks bathroom in order to catch her breath. Afraid to open her eyes, she walks with her head down staring at the pavement until she hears a bell jingle and her chin snaps up of its own volition.

The building is painted in blue and white, now, and a sign over the door reads _The Waverly Stop._ In the window she sees rows of breads and meats above a row of cheesecakes, muffins and brownies, and through the glass she sees rows of people talking, eating, laughing.

Her breath catches in her throat and hands fly to her mouth because there's a little girl sitting at the front counter with inky dark hair, as black as midnight, and she knows – knows, _knows_ who that is.

Behind the little girl is a man with sandy-brown hair and when he starts to turn Alex is propelled into motion and she runs, runs as fast as she can, away, away, because it's too much, it can't be that easy, and she can't, can't handle it, at all, at all.

--


	4. IV: Choice

--

**IV: Choice.**

--

_Life just kind of empties out –_

- Aimee Mann, _Little Bombs_.

--

Justin meets her at the airport and she nearly drowns beneath guilt that she doesn't understand. He can feel her conflict but doesn't push, and when he's driving them home in their ancient pickup truck, wheels bouncing on unpaved streets, she asks him if he would ever want to see their family again.

The wheel jerks suddenly and he grabs it with both hands, swallowing thickly. "Why – why would you ask me that?"

She leans her temple against the window, trying to figure out how much to say. "I was in New York," she finally says. "It just…made me think of things."

He takes a shaky breath and nods. "I don't know," he says. "I miss them, I do, but it's – it's not a constant thing anymore, you know? It's been too long."

"A lifetime," she says softly.

"Yes." He sighs. "Sometimes I think about where they are – I think they're alive – " he cocks his head and reconsiders. "No, I know they're alive. I can feel it. But I hope they're happy, and…and that's it."

"You wouldn't want to see them? Be…you know, around them again?" she pushes.

He pauses before he answers and she knows he means what he's saying. "I'm not sure," is the slow answer. "It'd be nice, I think, but…it also feels like it's too late for that, in a way." He looks over at her, brow creased. "Does that make sense?"

She swallows the lump in her throat and smiles. "Yes," she says firmly.

"What brought this on?" He asks. "Really."

"Nothing." She shakes her head. "I walked around the old neighborhood when I was there – " she sighs and thinks, Max is twenty-one, the baby, nine. "Just nostalgia."

--

She knows she should tell him, knows that he would be angry if he knew that she didn't, but every time she tries to find the words, she fails to gather the strength.

But there's something pushing at her, something that won't leave her alone, and so she decides to push back.

Subtly, she asks questions.

"Just how many of us are there left in the States, anyway?" She can ask these questions comfortably without prompting questions in return; her sudden renewed interest of the state of things in America is understandable, considering. (She doesn't know why she feels the need to hide her motivations from everyone, but secrecy is a state to which she has become accustomed.) "Not many with active powers, obviously – but inactive ones?"

Jackson is a loudmouth, flapping all over the place, a bouncy energy ever present in his words and actions. But there's also a measured quality to him, an undeniable sense of strategy that Alex has seen in action countless times (it should be very easy to trust him, but it isn't).

"Not that many, thankfully," Jackson answers. "There's say, a couple thousand. Maybe less. Most have misplaced to Europe and Asia – or gone completely off the radar, to places where humans can't go, you know." He shrugs. "The ones that stayed are stubborn, you know. Think things'll change, waiting around and hiding. Or they've stuck around to look for people they've lost – people who disappear, who've been captured or have run away."

Alex's heart skips a beat. "How sad."

"Mmm." Jackson nods. "Why'd you ask?"

Alex tilts her head and acts nonchalant. "Oh, I thought…maybe I saw someone I recognized. A wizard, I mean." At Jackson's raised eyebrow, she shakes her head. "I didn't approach anyone or compromise myself, don't worry. It didn't turn out to be him anyway – just someone who looked the same. But it still made me wonder, you know."

Jackson nods and seems to accept her answer at face value, but Alex doesn't ask him again.

Her job while in Italy is sort of a gopher type of position, moving between the different wizarding networks in different parts of the country. Her lack of powers enable her more freedom to travel through official channels and so she starts relaying messages from those in more influential positions. The extent of the Resistance network startles Alex; there are magic-sympathizers as well as actual wizards themselves working undercover in every major government in Europe. She hears whispers of those working in the US but the thought makes her shiver with dread.

She's in Rome on assignment when she meets a fellow inactive witch named Cassie, an American who calls Britain her home. She works as reporter for BBC and makes frequent trips to the States, bringing back information valuable to the Resistance – information they wouldn't have otherwise. Alex meets her at a hotel room right near the gates of Vatican City to trade news over black coffee.

"It scares me to death every time," Cassie confides, after they've exhausted all other shop talk. "From the second I land to the second I take off again, my hands never stop shaking."

"I've only been back once," Alex says. "Since my husband and I were misplaced." She shakes her head. "I nearly had a heart attack on the plane."

Cassie nods understandingly. "It never gets easier," she says. "You're lucky, though. You have a new face, new speech." She shrugs. "You don't have to claim heritage to a country inches away from genocide."

A chill races down Alex's spine. "You think it'll come to that?"

"I don't know," Cassie replies. "I…I really don't."

Alex trusts her – while logically knowing she shouldn't, there's a quality about Cassie that is calming, reassuring. She speaks Italian with a blunt, no nonsense edge which is reflected in her mannerisms and personality. Her hair is a muted brown (fake, Alex thinks – probably a natural redhead) and pulled back into a bun at the base of her neck, her wardrobe professional and classy. She dresses defensively, Alex thinks (because she's not so far gone that she still doesn't judge people on their sense of style).

She makes a quick, instinctive decision and tells Cassie about her family. "We didn't even try to look," she explains, not really feeling the need to defend their actions but making an effort anyway. "It was too dangerous to stay – it still is, even more so than before. But it _was_ them in that restaurant," she says with certainty. "And I can't figure out where to go from here."

"That's either the sweetest or the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Cassie replies, tapping a fingernail against her chin thoughtfully. "They're waiting for you. Trying to find you by returning to the last place they saw you – regardless of the fact that it's smack dab in the lion's den." She shakes her head. "Some family you've got."

"No kidding." Alex feels a weak, detached surge of pride, mixed with a healthy dose of exasperation. "We can't go back, especially that Ettore's powers are still very active." She shakes her head. "But I can't leave them there. It's too dangerous for them to stay – none of them are active, but they'll still be found out eventually."

Cassie nods, eyebrows pinched together. "Especially since they returned to the same place they were when you were growing up – that'll draw attention, if it hasn't already." She sipped at her coffee and pulled her cell phone from her pocket. "Let me make a few calls, okay?"

Cassie puts her in touch with a man named LP, a German Resistance fighter who works at smuggling witches and wizards out of the US. He calls her at her flat and she talks to him on the balcony, trying to appear nonchalant to Justin, who is cooking dinner six feet away.

"Cassie vouches for you," LP says. "And she's good people, you know."

"Yeah." She grips the balcony railing tightly, knuckles blooming white. "Look, I'm not asking you to put your neck on any chopping blocks for me here, I'd just like some advice."

LP gives a dry, cigarette-roughened chuckle. "My neck's been on the chopping block for a long time, sweetheart." She hears a rustle of paper, then the sound of a computer booting up. "You're with Jackson's crew, right? Italy."

"Yeah."

"Then let's do this thing."

He gets her booked on a cruise line to New York for the next month – little to no security and as low-key as it gets. He gives her instructions to meet him in Brooklyn upon her arrival and tells her that he'll handle the rest, don't worry, just pack light and be prepared.

"It shouldn't be too hard," he says. "I've done this a million times."

Alex bites her lip. "Where will they go?"

"Not with you," he says immediately. "Somewhere. I usually hand the families off to the misplacement people, but since they've already done that once, I doubt they'll do the spells again. Most likely they'll be sent underground – I hear there's this hot new community below Paris, about two thousand kilometers down or so."

Alex breathes out a sigh, unsure how to take the answer. "Thanks," she says shortly.

"Don't thank me," he says. "Not yet."

--

Her plans finalized, she feels stunned almost, as if she blinked and suddenly found herself in the midst of a rescue mission. What are you doing, she asks herself. Are you stupid?

She looks at Justin, his features relaxed and movements loose and thinks, yes.

When she tells him, he stops eating and stares at a spot in the air somewhere above her head. "I thought it wasn't going to be that often," he says. "You just got back a month ago."

"This is…special." She sighs and quickly lists the pros and cons of telling him in her head. "Kind of a sudden thing."

"What is it?" he asks. "It's not dangerous. Is it?"

"No," she says hesitantly. "It shouldn't be."

"Wow," he replies. "That's comforting."

She's never been that great at protecting people, she knows. When she was seven and Justin was nine, there'd been a bully that lived in the apartment building across the street who used to try and steal her lunch money every day, and every day she would offer Justin's in return for her own relief. When she was twelve and he was fourteen, they broke Theresa's glass statuette from Barcelona during a fight and she blamed him without a second thought, and when she was seventeen and he was nineteen, she let him pass up freedom in order to protect her and she will never forget all that he gave up the day he made that decision. (Thinking back, she knows that he'd known exactly what would happen with sick certainty, just as she had, and feels a million times worse – he could've been anything, she thinks. Anything, but chose to belong to her instead.)

She was never the kind of person who thought of being a hero, who thought of anything really, other than anything that benefited her own interests. Justin was the one to bend over backwards to make those around him as comfortable as possible, while she still feels like a fraud when listening to Jackson's pep talks on strength and bravery. (She's not cut out for this, she really isn't. But is anyone?)

She can name every small betrayal, every meaningless wound she's inflicted on him throughout their entire lives, and the list is long and shameful. But there are some lines she's never crossed, ever, and she realizes with a start that this is one of them. (His burdens are heavier than hers, and she will never not feel guilty.)

"There's a family in trouble," she says slowly, carefully. "They've been ID'd by the authorities – we don't have much time to get them out. They need my help." She traces her knuckles over his cheek, brings his eyes in line with hers. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

He grabs her hand and kisses it. "Okay," he says, and she feels nothing but relief.

--

So she goes to New York. (And gets a pretty nice tan on the cruise there. So that's kinda cool, she guesses.)

LP is not the shifty, overweight ratty-looking guy she'd pictured – instead, he is suave and cool in an expensive suit and tie, hair slicked back with gel and a stainless steel cigarette case in his breast pocket.

He takes one look at her and shakes his head. "No, this won't do." She looks down at her simple sundress uncertainly, raising an eyebrow at him. "You got anything nicer? Professional looking?" She shrugs and he rolls his eyes. "Italians."

"What?" Alex frowns.

"Macy's." He looks pointedly over his shoulder, in the direction of the busy city street. "And step on it."

He makes her buy a dark blue business suit, the most boring outfit that she's ever laid her hands on, but when she puts it on and combs her hair straight she fits right into his side like a corporate puzzle piece.

"We're lawyers," he explains, extending an arm and signaling a cab like a pro. "Evicting the Russos from their building." He grins. "Good of an excuse as any to leave town."

"Oh." Alex clenches her fists by her sides. "We're – we're doing it now? I mean – "

"No time like the present." He opens the door to the taxi for her, raising one shaggy eyebrow. "The quicker we get this done, the better."

She nods and slides into the backseat, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"Do they know we're coming?" she asks, somewhere around 42nd street.

"They should," he replies. "Your uncle – he and I go way back."

Alex's breath catches in her throat. "Kelbo," she whispers. "He's – he's there? With them?" she asks sharply.

"Yeah." LP shrugs, and a rush of fury rises in Alex's throat, quickly followed by a cloud of questions. She opens her mouth but the cabbie pulls to a stop and her voice dies.

The deli is mostly empty, aside from a few straggling customers that Alex can see through the window. She steps onto the curb in her heels-that-don't-match and her most-boring-outfit-ever and tilts her chin up to the sky, catching sight of curtains rustling in the apartment above.

"You ready?"

Alex slides her Nicole-Ritchie-sunglasses over her eyes, shuttering the top half of her face from the world and thinks, no. I'm really, really not. "Yes."

The only employee in the restaurant is a man, leaning against the counter, face buried in a comic book. When LP swings the door open and triggers the bell, he looks up and Alex is unprepared for the drop in her stomach.

Max is – god, he's grown up, she thinks, and she knew that – _knew_ that, but seeing it is a different story. He's really tall, she notices, taller than Justin, even. His hair has darkened a bit and to her surprise, a pair of wire-frame glasses rest on his face. He tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, and Alex sees her mother in his expression.

"Can I help you?" His eyes pass over her cursorily and she fights to keep her face neutral.

"Yes, we're representatives of Merbaugh, Simon and Lester," LP pontificates, sliding a business card from his pocket and handing it off. "Are you Jerry M. Russo?"

Max frowns briefly, then something passes across his face and his expression goes blank. "No, that's my dad," he says. "Hold on a second."

He jogs up the stairs – black tile now, not white – and Alex lets herself breathe again, realizing with a start that she's been cutting bruises into her palms from clenching her fists so tight.

She is more prepared for her father to descend and manages to keep her composure tightly controlled, even as her heart threatens to beat itself out of her chest. (There is a tired old man wearing the face of her father, and she never thought it would hurt this much.)

She hangs back as LP takes charge, not trusting herself to say a word as LP speaks in hushed, hurried tones with Jerry. She is ignored for the most part, until she sees Jerry take in a sharp breath, stepping backwards a bit and turning to jerk his head at Max.

"Why don't you come upstairs?" Jerry asks, his tone flat and neutral. "We can discuss this further – Max, man the fort down here, okay?"

"Sure," Max replies, and Jerry pats his shoulder as he passes.

Alex keeps behind LP, sunglasses firmly in place as they climb the familiar stairs up to the apartment. She thinks of the last time she was here – sneaking away in the dead of night, clutching onto the collar of Justin's shirt – and bites her lip.

"Here we are," Jerry says, holding the door open for them. As they step through, he closes it behind them and Alex feels a shiver of magic wash over her skin. "We can talk freely now."

"Protection spells?" LP asks, sounding just as frustrated as Alex suddenly feels. "Are you crazy or just reckless?"

Jerry raises an eyebrow. "Kelbo did them," he says. "He knows how to make them undetectable."

Alex keeps silent, still, a flurry of contradicting emotions at war in her chest. She can see her mother in the kitchen, watching them with half a tense gaze. A little girl sits on the counter eating snap peas, her thick black hair pulled back in two ponytails.

LP introduces himself, shaking Jerry's hand. "I have to say, I don't know whether to be freaked out or impressed. It's a miracle you guys have escaped detection. How long have you been back? Since your misplacement, I mean."

"A few years," Jerry replies shortly, eyes drifting to Alex. "And you are…?"

Alex clears the dryness from her throat. "Daniela Esposito," she replies, emphasizing the accent in her voice. "I work for the Resistance in Veneto." She glances at LP, who has no outward reaction to her decision not to reveal her true identity. "I ID'd you my last trip over here, decided to help."

Jerry frowns at this. "What? How – "

"It's imperative that you get your family out of the country as soon as possible, Mr. Russo," she says quickly. "Every day, your Congress comes a little bit closer to passing legislation allowing regular Sonar sweeps of every citizen, and witches and wizards are kidnapped and taken into custody every day." She shakes her head, frustration giving her speech sharp, pointed edges. "It's a miracle that you haven't been killed yet – or worse."

Jerry pinches the bridge of his nose. "You don't understand – "

"Oh?"

"No." He crosses his arms, anger creeping into his voice. "It's not like we wanted to come back, okay? We had to." He huffs angrily.

"Why?" Alex demands. LP shoots her a look, but stays silent. "You were out. Free. Why would you reverse your misplacement spells?"

Theresa has given up the pretense of cooking, hovering somewhere between the kitchen and the living room where they are all standing, wringing her hands nervously. Jerry exchanges a look with her before shaking his head. "Our children," he says. "My eldest son and daughter – we have to find them."

"You left them behind for the initial misplacement," LP says. "And they ran?" Jerry looks at him sharply and LP shrugs. "In your file."

"Kelbo was supposed to watch them," Jerry bites out angrily. "He got picked up by the NSA just months before he was gonna bring them to us, and when your Resistance finally got him out, they were both gone." Anguish flickers across his face. "We've looked – everywhere. For all these years. I know they're alive, I just don't know if they – " He straightens his shoulders and takes a breath. "We have to stay, in case they come back. We can't abandon them again."

"Don't you think that your children would want you to be _safe_?" Alex asks, her own anger surprising her. "It didn't occur to you that by deliberately putting the rest of your family in danger, you are disrespecting all that they sacrificed?"

A storm gathers on her father's face. "Look, lady – "

"Jerry," Theresa interrupts. "She's right."

Jerry jerks his head over to look at his wife. "What?"

She makes a face, moving over behind the couch and whispering to him fiercely. Alex stands with her chin held high, heart in her throat as Theresa eyes her piercingly between sentences.

"We'll do it," Theresa finally says, stepping aside as Jerry storms off down the hallway, shoulders tense. "We'll do it if you help us find them – Justin and Alex Russo," she says pleadingly. "We just – we want to know where they are. That's all." She looks at Alex, face naked and raw. "We just want to know."

Alex swallows, although her throat is dry. "I'll make some calls," she says.

--

Feeling the walls of the apartment closing in around her, Alex escapes as quickly as she can, retreating to her cheap motel room, connected to LP's by an adjoining door.

LP raids the mini bar, leaning against the partition between their rooms with a tinkling glass of vodka in his hand. "You feel better?"

"No." Alex stays in her ugly business suit, afraid if she changes back into her Dani wardrobe that she won't have the courage to get through this. "When do we get them out?"

"Charter plane booked for tomorrow night," LP answers. "You gonna tell them who you are?"

"_No,_" Alex repeats impatiently.

"Might help."

"Hey, I have an idea," Alex spits angrily. "How about you go into your own room and mind your own fucking business?"

LP's mouth twists into a smirk, and Alex is suddenly reminded of the boys she used to date in high school, boys with good reasons to carry practiced smirks like LP's. "Just trying to help, Dani_ela._"

"I don't need your help."

LP shrugs and bends down the minibar, swiping a bottle of vodka. "Maybe a drink, then?"

Alex sighs, too exhausted to hold onto her frustration. "Fine."

LP grabs a hotel cup and tosses the paper covering into the garbage can, pouring half the small bottle into the glass. He grabs a box of orange juice and pours that in as well, swirling the mixture around. "I used to tend bar, you know," he says. "When I lived in San Francisco."

"You lived in the States?" Alex accepts the drink he hands her, frowning. "I thought you were German?"

"Well, mostly German." He quirks a smile. "I was born in Munich. My parents emigrated to California when I was three. Grew up in Modesto."

Alex nods and sips at her drink, wincing at the bitterness. "Your accent?"

"My accent changes at will," he says, suddenly a Frenchman. "I can do everything from Scottish," he lilts, "to American." His sentence ends bluntly, and Alex feels a little dizzy.

"Wow."

"Yeah." He takes a drag from the tiny vodka bottle. "Sometimes even I forget who I'm supposed to be."

"I know what you mean."

He nods and studies her from beneath his eyelashes. "I was married once, you know," he says, seemingly out of the blue. Alex raises an eyebrow. "Tall drink of water, named Beth." He shakes his head. "Man, she was something. Wore these pretty-girl dresses all the time – high heels, make up. Looked like a Barbie doll. But she cursed like a sailor and could drink me under the table in an hour flat." He chuckled. "Met her at a bar. She hustled me in a game of pool."

Alex tilts her head and looks up at him. "What happened?"

He drains the rest of the vodka bottle. "She was a wizard," he says, "like me. An old friend from college turned her in during the first round of radar sweeps – years ago." Alex winces, but LP's words are tinged with pride, not sadness. "They took her in the middle of the day, at work – she waited tables at the bar where I worked. She went kicking and screaming. I would've fought too, but she put a binding spell on me. Couldn't move a muscle – just watch as they dragged her away."

Alex feels horrified. "I'm – I'm sorry."

LP looks almost startled, swiveling his head around to look at her. "Don't be," he says, and laughs. "She escaped twenty minutes later and threw herself off a bridge. They didn't get jack squat from her." He grins and lobs the bottle in the trash can, ignoring Alex's wary expression. "Defiant to the end, that was my girl."

Alex sits frozen until LP retreats to his own room, bile rising in her throat. Pushing down the disgust and confusion, she collapses onto the edge of the bed and stares at her reflection in the mirror above the television. Her face is her own and also not, the twisting of her features both achingly familiar and foreign as the faces of her family now are. She thinks of Max and feels her throat close, struck by how much _older_ he looked. The Max in her head is perpetually twelve years old – with gaps between his teeth and a gleam of mischief absent in what she'd seen of the twenty-one-year-old version she'd glimpsed today.

The familiar yearning for home sharpens to a vicious point, and she moves on instinct, leaning down to claw through her suitcase, recovering the disposable cell phone from the bottom of the satchel. She thinks of LP's dead wife and her hands start to shake.

She glances at the clock and calculates the time difference in her head and dials his work phone, knowing he'll be in his classroom already. It rings twice and when she hears his voice, she collapses backwards onto the bed.

"…hello?" he repeats, sounding impatient.

"It's me."

"Dani." She hears a rustling of paper. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Her voice breaks and she winces.

"What is it." She worries her bottom lip, staring at the ceiling. "_Dani_."

"Do you regret it?" She almost continues, then remembers caution and takes a deep breath. "Do you regret…marrying me?"

There's a moment of silence, then a soft creaking sound. She pictures his classroom, his desk, older than both of them, his creaky chair with cracked, red leather upholstery. "No," he says. "You know I would never regret that."

"But – " her voice dies. "You could've – you could've done anything – "

"Like what?" He sounds almost amused. "You could've, too. This goes both ways."

"No, it doesn't." She turns onto her side and shuts her eyes so tightly that stars of light explode beneath her eyelids. "You're so smart, and grown up and good and – and handsome, and I'm irresponsible and immature and – "

"Oh, cut it out." He huffs a sigh. "You know you're none of those things."

"If you had to do it again," she says, "and – and there was no limits, you know? No restrictions? Don't tell me you'd make the same choices."

A moment of silence, then, "okay, fine. You're right about that." She sucks in a harsh breath, but before she has time to hurt he continues, "but regardless of the decisions I would change, whatever end result I would reach would always involve you."

She lets out the breath, feeling dizzy. "Not – not like – "

"Does that even matter?"

Alex chews on her lip. "I guess not."

"You're the constant," he says gently. "Wherever we are, we're together. Nothing else matters."

"Yeah."

"Is that what you needed to hear?"

Alex's breath breaks on a laugh as she wipes at the wetness beneath her eyes. "Yes. You're really good at that."

"Good." She hears a shrill bell from his end of the line. "I've got – "

"Yeah. Okay." She sits up and wipes at her face again. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Dani."

She cuts off the call and lets the phone fall from her hands. She focuses her eyes on the opposite wall of the room but sees Italy instead – the pure greenness of the grass along the side of the roads, the cobbled stones of the streets and how the ocean colors the edges of everything in salt and space. She shuts her eyes and imagines the Italian air, fresh and clean, wrapping her body in layers of peace. In her mind's eye, Justin is on the balcony of their flat, a glass of wine in his hand, hair long and falling into his eyes, looking over his shoulder at her, his grin pushing at her from the top of her forehead down to the tips of her toes, making all the corners of her body ache.

Doesn't she deserve Italy? She's been craving the security it provides for years, the sanctuary and isolation. She thinks of shedding identities like snake skins, of running and cheap motels and desperation and cloying fear that clung to her body like smoke, seeping through her pores, coating her teeth and tongue until her food turned to ash on her taste buds. There's only so much a person can take, she thinks, and she's sure that she reached her quota a long time ago.

She feels suddenly ridiculous, sitting in a stupid, overpriced hotel room in her stupid, overpriced suit with her stupid, mismatched sandals. She was never meant for this kind of responsibility, regardless of the faith that Justin and Jackson and Cassie have in her – the weight of this decision is not one that she wants, despite the fact that she's been looking for it. None of this makes sense, nothing really has for a long time. She feels like she's come to a point of unexpected clarity, a light in the fog she's been traveling through for so long – fog of uncertainty, or maybe horror.

Outside the window, the sun is sinking below the horizon line, casting the city in rays of brilliant orange and red. She rises from the bed and moves to the window, leaning her forehead against the glass.

Let the world burn itself, she thinks. Let them ruin themselves out of fear and ignorance. Let them. She doesn't care. She just doesn't.

And then she stands, until the sun sets.

--

They make it out of New York without incident.

Alex has a new resolve, a stony strength that wasn't present before. She stays stoic through the late-night elope from Waverly Place to the drawn-out flight to London, enclosed in the claustrophobic private cabin with the Russos overnight. She nearly loses her temper when she sees Kelbo for the first time, carrying the still-unnamed little girl in his arms, but shuts her eyes and thinks of the herbs that grow wild in her garden at home, centering herself.

They disembark at Heathrow and grab a train into central London, boarding the Underground. They head for King's Cross, their plan to find a hotel to rest before meeting Cassie and another Resistance representative later that day, who will take the family to the next rendezvous point – the first of many jumps around Europe that they will have to endure before finally heading to their final destination – unknown to Alex.

She finds herself looking over her shoulder at their faces every few seconds, keeping them in her eye line as much as possible, her natural sense of paranoia at a boiling point. They're all exhausted, bags beneath their eyes, too ragged to even be dazzled by the new sensations of their new surroundings. For the most part, they all huddle around the little girl, trading off holding the drowsy child in their arms, each one of them – Kelbo, Max, Theresa, Jerry – with one eye on her at all times.

The dynamic has shifted, Alex sees, to this overprotective bubble around the child. She realizes with a sick start that she still doesn't know her name, and spends the entire Tube ride to King's Cross station trying to discern whether or not she wants to know.

LP, who has lived in London before and is more familiar with it than any of them, leads them through the crowded streets to a bus stop, motioning them into the small shelter built next to the sign to take refuge from the light drizzle falling from the gloomy sky. Alex leans against a shampoo advertisement and watches as the adults once again crowd around the little girl, all of them maneuvering themselves so that they have some kind of physical contact with her, napping peacefully in Max's arms.

Theresa, however, breaks away and approaches Alex, a look on her face that gives away her question before she asks.

"Did you find anything?" she says hopefully. "On – on Alex and Justin?"

Alex swallows and looks past her mother to the little girl. It's as if she's looking into a mirror from twenty years before. She sees Justin's nose, a bit of his chin on her face beneath her hair, and it's more than a little spooky.

"What's her name?"

Theresa looks startled, following Alex's gaze backwards to the girl. She turns back and smiles a little. "Jennifer," she says. "We call her Jen."

"Jen." Alex braces herself for the hurt, but it doesn't come. Just an echo of regret, a lingering sadness that tinges the edges of her smile. "She's a beautiful little girl."

Theresa's smile widens. "Thank you," she says, her accent thickening with her emotion, just as Alex remembers from her childhood. "She's a little spitfire," she goes on. "Can't leave her alone for two minutes; she's always breaking or destroying something. Just like her big sister."

Alex sighs. "Mrs. Russo – " A flash of panic cuts her off and Alex bends over suddenly, clutching her stomach.

"Um – Ms. Esposito?" Theresa lays a tentative hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Alex straightens up, urgency sharpening her movements. Ignoring Theresa, she turns to LP. "We have to go."

"What?" LP moves from the sign over to Alex, leaning in. "Uh, we are…?"

"No – no, now! We've got to go _now._"

"Cassie – "

"Gone already. Compromised." LP stares at her. "I can't explain how I know, I just do – we have to go." Alex pushes past LP and whistles through her teeth, flagging down a taxi cab. "You take the girl and the parents, I'll take the uncle and the older one – head for the safe house." She opens the taxi door and motions at Theresa, whose eyes widen. She whirls around and gathers the girl – Jen – in her arms and moves without hesitation, climbing into the back of the taxi. "Now, LP!"

"Fine." He motions at Jerry, who follows his wife with a furrowed brow, and climbs into the cab, raising an eyebrow at Alex as the door shuts.

Alex watches as the taxi speeds off and immediately whistles for another one – the heavy traffic around the King's Cross train station suddenly a blessing as another cab immediately appears. Fear hastens her movements as she wrenches the car door open and hustles Kelbo and Max into the back, climbing in after them and spitting the address at the driver hurriedly.

"What's going on?" Kelbo asks, scrunched up against the opposite door.

"Later." Alex cuts off Max's protest with a hand. "Later!"

The cab works its way through the narrow London streets slowly, stopping and starting at traffic lights and intersections, increasing the dreading feeling of intuition pounding at the edges of Alex's skull. Fifteen minutes after leaving King's Cross, the feeling intensifies and she cries out, the panic turning to pain and stabbing at her, behind her eyes.

"Are you okay?"

Alex takes deep breaths, waving Max off and concentrates. Casting out her senses, she focuses on the pain, following it through to its source. Like pushing through molasses, her lack of active powers makes the process agonizing – forcing a square peg into a round hole. Through the haze of images, she grabs onto a name. "Thomas," she manages, through gritted teeth. "Rebecca Thomas."

"Who?"

Alex ignores the voice and sinks deeper, clenching her fists. "Oh God," she gasps. "Oh my God." Images flash across her mind's eye and she suddenly sits up, nearly smacking Max in the jaw. Lunging at the gate separating them from the front seat, she smacks it violently, startling the driver. "Faster!" she says. "As fast as you can."

"Jesus, I'm going as fast as I can," the driver snaps. "Calm down."

Alex chokes on a sob and whirls around, peering out the back window. Her vision narrows and her breath catches. "Oh God." She turns and looks at Max and Kelbo, staring at her through wide eyes. "I'm so sorry." She shuts her eyes, reaches up and feels blood on her neck, the visions invading her mind blurring together behind her eyelids into streaks of color and emotion – so much emotion. Alex nearly chokes on it, the fear, panic, confusion and terror swelling up in her throat, all of it foreign and overwhelming. She clenches her nails into her palms and the striking pain in her head and in her heart blends together until all she can feel is desperation, just a begging voice, somewhere in her consciousness, pleading for it to back off, to stop, to release, and – "I'm sorry," she nearly yells, bringing her fists to her eyes, "I'm so, so sorry – "

– and the sky explodes.

--

Alex wakes up on a futon, her head in her mother's lap.

Blinking, she sits up, her head pounding and something sticky coating her neck. Slowly, her hearing returns and she registers loud voices, yelling, people running, TVs and radios blasting.

"What happened?" She turns to look at Theresa, one hand moving to the sticky moisture on her neck. Her hand comes away red. "Where am I?"

"Um – Trafalgar?" Theresa steadies Alex with a nervous hand. "Your ear was bleeding," she continues shakily. "This woman came by and said you'd be fine, though – "

"No – I mean, what _happened?_" Alex frowns and remembers pain, a taxi – a name? Rebecca Thomas? What –

"There was an explosion," Theresa says. "King's Cross blew up." She takes a breath. "A lot of people died."

"Oh my God." Alex swivels her head and catches sight of a TV in the corner tuned to BBC, images of smoky rubble on the screen, ambulances and men in red coats digging through piles of stone and brick, people sitting on stretchers, covered in blood.

"We got out of the way in time," Theresa says. "Our taxi was way out of range. Yours was closer – it crashed into a pole." She takes a breath. "Max and Kelbo are fine – the driver, too. They said you passed out before the crash. They sent a team – uh, the Resistance, I mean – to get you out of there – they didn't want you to have to deal with the police. They did something to the driver, modified his memory? So that he thinks his cab was empty when he crashed?"

Alex's gaze is fixed on the television screen. "Rebecca Thomas," she whispers.

"Who?"

Alex shakes her head. "I – I have to find LP – Cassie – "

"Stop." Theresa grabs her arm, drags her back down to the futon. "Just – stop. Rest."

"I – "

Theresa shakes her head, shushes her. Pulling a handkerchief from her pocket, she wipes at the blood on Alex's neck gently. "Just stop for a second." She cleans Alex's neck gently, brow furrowed. "You saved our lives," she says quietly. "You saved my family's lives."

Alex is silent for a second, trembling at Theresa's touch. "Where are they?" she finally asks.

"Eating," Theresa replies, nodding at the crowd of preoccupied Resistance workers, talking on cell phones and hunched over desks. "The woman who checked you over took them to get some food." She pauses. "I stayed here with you."

"Cassie," Alex says. "Probably Cassie."

"How did you know?" Theresa asks. "How did you know we were in danger? I thought you didn't have active powers."

"So did I." Alex sits up gingerly, biting her lip. "Magic's a funny thing," she says softly, eyes widening as a thought hits her suddenly. "Oh my God, Ettore," she says, hand flying to her mouth.

"Who?"

"My husband," Alex says. "He knows – he must be so worried – " she stands up and promptly collapses back down, dizziness hitting her squarely in the forehead.

"Here, use this." Theresa presses a cell phone into her hand and Alex takes it blindly, dialing the numbers from memory.

She reaches the voicemail on the phone at their flat and leaves a mostly incoherent message that she knows will only make him worry more, but as she flips the phone closed tears rush to her eyes and she can't gather the energy to do anything but surrender to them.

"Oh, honey." Theresa takes the phone from her hand and enfolds Alex in her arms, patting her hair, whispering soft Spanish words into her hair.

Somewhere in her head, Alex recognizes how bizarre it feels, but on the surface – this is her mother – her _mother._ Nearly ten years of wondering, of tension and hopelessness tightens into a snap, and she sobs into a lap that is both familiar and not at the same time.

"That's it, _querida._" Theresa rubs her shoulder as she calms, flipping Alex's bangs away from her face as she sits up. "You're just a young thing, aren't you?"

Alex gives a watery laugh. "Not so young."

"No, I guess not." Theresa sounds sad. "Everything is so – " she trails off, eyes growing distant.

"Yeah." Alex finds her center and clears her throat, wiping at her eyes. "I – uh, you asked me about your – your children?"

Theresa's head snaps over, and a light flares in her eyes. "I was hoping – " she says, then cuts herself off and shrugs. "Yes. Just hoping. No expecting, you know."

Alex feels something snap into place in her head, something that had been askew ever since the night she'd watched her family drive away into darkness. Her mouth opens and words fly out of their own volition, without any real prompting from Alex herself.

"They're safe. Happy. They were misplaced almost five years ago."

Theresa lets out a sound halfway between a laugh and a moan and hunches over, folding into herself and burying her face in her hands. "Oh, God," she chokes, and Alex reaches for her instinctually, placing one hand on the back of her mother's neck.

"They moved around quite a bit after you left them," she hears herself say. "They had to leave New York – but they stuck together. When they got the opportunity for misplacement, they took it." Theresa's shoulders shake beneath her hands. "He's a – a teacher, now. She's a graphic designer. They – they're still together."

Theresa sits up slightly, pulling her hands away from her face. "They're – they're okay, though."

"Yes." She moves her hand to Theresa's shoulder, squeezing tightly. "They – they miss you. And they love you. And – and they want you to know that – that things are better this way." She swallows a lump in her throat.

"Better?" Theresa croaks. "How are they better? How is anything better?" She clutches at the edge of the futon, eyes dry and red, a manic glint in them. "The world's gone _insane!_ People are – are hunting us down, blowing us up! And they're gone!" She reaches up and grabs her hair, pulling and shaking her head frantically. "We left them _alone_, and – and we gave them up – "

"No." Alex shakes her head, a horrified realization creeping over her. "No – you. You set them free." She grabs her mother's face, forcing her to meet her gaze. "You did what you had to do, and you _trusted_ them, and it worked out. It worked out." Theresa frowns slightly. "There is no blame, okay? No blame."

Alex can feel her mother's tears on her hands. "We won't ever see them again." Theresa's head dips down. "We – they're really gone."

"Not gone." Alex's own vision blurs and she collapses forward, grabbing the older woman in an embrace. She recalls LP's tragic story of his wife, life brutally ended in an act of defiance, a useless, pointless end to a vibrant woman – one of many hopeless, painful stories collected by wizards and mortals alike over the past decade. If Alex could cut into the soul of the world, she's sure she would hear it weeping – but the _pride_ in LP's voice, the reverence, the humor – she hadn't understood it the other night, had dismissed it, hadn't had the energy to dissect it or examine it.

She understands it now, realizes what LP was trying to convey to her. His wife's life ended abruptly and unfairly, yes – but her memory – the very essence of who she was – lives on. There was sorrow in his story, yes, but also happiness, pride – so much pride. It's not living long that matters, it's living best. Living the most, living the happiest. She thinks of Justin – Ettore. Thinks of Ettore, and Italy, and smiles.

"As long as you remember them," Alex says to her mother. "As long as you keep loving them and believing in them?" She laughs a little, joyful in her own discovery. "It doesn't matter." Theresa lifts her head and looks at her. "None of this matters, really. It doesn't. The important things transcend all of this."

Theresa sniffles a little and reaches out with her hand, gently touching the side of Alex's face. "What – what was your first name?"

"Daniela." Alex catches sight of the rest of the Russos in the distance, heading for them, eyes on Theresa. She feels a little bolt of sadness that fades quickly – this is a family that is no longer hers. Not anymore. The certainty settles in her heart with a soft click. "Everyone calls me Dani, though."

"Dani." Alex nods and slips from Theresa's grip, dizziness gone. "Dani – thank you – "

But she's already walking away, her back turned, and when she turns around one last time, they've already faded into the crowd.

--

Epilogue to come.


	5. epilogue

--

**Epilogue**

--

Rebecca Thomas is found and arrested in São Paulo, Brazil, on the morning that Daniela Esposito goes into labor. She hears the news bulletin on the radio as she drives herself to the school where her husband Ettore works, the words bouncing off the sides of her awareness like pebbles. It isn't until hours later that she recognizes the significance, a secondhand realization in her haze of exhaustion and delirious happiness, a memory that flits ineffectively across the edges of her consciousness, a remembered feeling of terror that has lost all relevance and impact in the overwhelming face of the birth of her child.

International terrorism has no place in a small rural hospital, at any rate. There are but two nurses, old elderly women who coo over the young couple and their little newborn girl, tut-tutting and fluttering their hands over the tiny hands and feet, the ink black hair, the miniature button nose. The students in Ettore's class all pitch in and send a bouquet of flowers, huge Italian blossoms that drip fragrance and make Daniela's every breath a gift of natural perfume, and Jackson, now Daniela's former boss, sends a card from his office in Rome. LP sends a single daisy, unmarked, that glows faintly when touched.

They have the evening for peace. In the morning, Cassie comes.

It starts with an eerie feeling, and then things…slow down. The measured bustle of the hospital freezes in place, the lights dim, and the clocks slow to a dead stop. Outside, cars stop in the middle of the streets, their drivers preserved in a single moment.

In the sanctuary of the hospital room, Ettore and Daniela look at each other, alarmed. Then, the door opens, and Cassie is there.

"We don't have much time," she says by way of greeting. "Have you been watching the news?"

"We were a little busy," Ettore says dryly, just as Daniela looks up at her friend incredulously and says, "did you stop _time_ to talk to us?"

"You're both in danger," Cassie says urgently, ignoring the heavy look that passes between the couple. "Well, all three of you. They know Rebecca Thomas is a witch. It hasn't been leaked to the press yet, but it will." Cassie's face is pinched and she looks twenty years older than she did the last time Dani saw her.

"Slow down," Daniela says, clutching the bundled child closer to her chest. "Just – slow down. Rebecca Thomas is a witch?"

"_Yes,_" Cassie says impatiently. "And she blew up King's Cross station in London. Think about that for a second." Heavy dread settles into the room like a rain cloud. "And they're on Jackson's trail. It's a matter of time before they make the connection to you and me – and the fact that we were both _in London_ at the time of the explosion – you, at the scene of the crime, no less."

Old familiar terror starts to claw at Daniela's throat. "No," she chokes. "No, no." Ettore comes up behind her and she clutches at him desperately.

"We have two options," Cassie blazes on. "Misplacement again. The Resistance will make an exception and perform the spell for you again, considering that it was your vision that gave us Thomas's name," Cassie nods at the baby succinctly.

"We can't," Ettore says automatically. "No, we can't do that again. No more switching, no more running."

"Then option two." Cassie takes a vial from her coat pocket, tosses it to Ettore. "Power stripping potion, for you and the baby." Ettore's eyes widen and he nearly drops the bottle in surprise. "It's completely permanent, it will make both of you completely undetectable to any magical scan. You'll be completely non-magical – any future children or grandchildren will be mortal." A long look passes between the couple.

"C-can we have some time to think about it?" Daniela stammers. She looks down at the little girl in her arms. "God, we – we need time."

"You don't have much," Cassie warns. "Call me by tonight if you want to misplace. Otherwise, I'll assume you took the potion." She turns abruptly, shoulders clenched and nearly wrenches the door off the hinges in her haste. Pausing briefly, she turns around and gives a smile that is twisted, a grotesque mockery of happiness. "Congratulations," she says, and then she disappears.

And as time begins again, Ettore and Daniela stare at each other in silence.

--

As it turns out, it doesn't take that much to make the decision at all. They take the baby home that evening, mechanical in their motions. Still unnamed, they bundle her in blankets and keep their eyes on her small, delicate form as much as possible, as if she would dissolve into smoke should either of their gazes stray for too long.

Ettore drinks his half of the potion the second that the baby is tucked safely into her cradle, collapsing on the kitchen floor as the potion slices through his body like a hot knife in cold butter. Daniela drags him to the bed and sits with him for hours before he stops shaking, and when he opens his eyes the loss in them nearly cripples her.

"We can't give that to her," she says shrilly. "We can't do that to her, she's _two days old –_ " Ettore grabs at her arm, pulls her down next to him.

"Magic," he says hoarsely. "I have a lot of it. She doesn't. Not yet." He pauses, clears his throat, and tightens his grip on her thigh to a bruising intensity. "Not ever."

Daniela chokes on a sob and buries her face in his shoulder.

The next morning, they mix the remainder of the potion into a bottle of breast milk, and feed her the entire batch. It takes nearly twenty minutes for it to take effect. She cries all day.

When she finally quiets, Ettore gathers her into his arms and takes her onto the balcony, standing in silence against the backdrop of the Italian dusk. Daniela looks at them from her position on the bed, recalling the night she lost her own powers, a night that seems like lifetimes ago now.

"I have a name," Ettore says abruptly, shattering the fragile silence.

"Hmm?"

"Carlina." He turns around, holding the baby high in his arms, his cheek resting on her head. "Carlina, Carlina…" he whispers.

Daniela looks at them and thinks, my family. My human, my mortal family. "Carlina," she repeats, rolling it over her tongue. Rising, she joins them on the balcony, resting a light hand on her daughter's forehead. "Beautiful," she says softly. "It's beautiful."

Ettore offers her a weary smile, edged at the corners with tenderness and something else, something else. "You're beautiful," he murmurs, and a bolt of pleasure shivers down her spine.

Tentative happiness settles over them in a warm embrace, and Daniela leans her forehead on the forearm holding the small baby, small Carlina, and sighs. "First sunset," she says, and feels him kiss the crown of her head. Turning, she fits herself in the space between his arms and the balcony railing, raising her eyes to the brilliant streaks of light that paint the skyline. She feels Ettore move behind her, and the tiny breaths of Carlina against her shoulder, and together, they watch the day die.

"Little Carlina," Ettore whispers. "Little Carlina, you're free."

--

the end.

--

Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed, commented or taken the time to express their enjoyment over this story. It grew out of nothing and took me by surprise, and I'm so pleased that so many of you loved it. Your words moved me very much; an Italian sunset, just for me. 3


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